THE    LIFE 


OF 


CHARLES    SUMNER 


The  Scholar  in  Politics 


BY 

ARCHIBALD  H.  GRIMKE 

AUTHOR    OF    "  WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON,"    ETC. 


FUNK  &  WAGNALLS   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 

LONDON  TORONTO 

1892 


Copyright  1892  by  the 
FUNK    &   WAGNALI.S    COMPANY 


gedication. 

To  my  dear  child,  Angelina,  whose  long  and 
painful  illness  occupied  so  much  of  my  thoughts 
during  the  composition  of  these  pages,  this  record 
of  a  noble  life  is  lovingly  dedicated. 


M188368 


PREFACE. 


IN  the  two  volumes  assigned  to  him  in  the  Ameri 
can  Reformer  Series,  viz.,  the  "  Life  of  WILLIAM  LLOYD 
GARRISON,  the  Abolitionist,"  and  that  of  "  CHARLES 
SUMNER,  the  Scholar  in  Politics,"  the  Author  has 
tried  to  give  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  forces,  moral 
and  political,  which  combined  to  achieve  the  downfall 
of  slavery  and  the  slave-power  in  the  United  States. 

In  the  "  Life  of  Garrison  "  his  pages  are  mainly  con 
cerned  with  the  moral  aspect  of  the  great  struggle, 
while  in  the  *'  Life  of  Sumner  "  the  political  side  of  the 
contest  has  chiefly  occupied  his  attention.  Garrison, 
more  than  any  other  man,  embodied  the  moral  forces 
of  the  conflict,  the  story  of  his  life  being  essen 
tially  the  history  of  the  moral  uprising  against  Slav 
ery;  while  on  the  other  hand  Sumner  was  the  imper 
sonation  of  the  political  movement  against  the  giant 
evil  of  the  country. 

Between  these  two  volumes  the  Author  hopes  that 
he  has  measurably  succeeded  in  conveying  a  tolerably 
comprehensive  and  vivid  impression  of  that  grandest 
chapter  which  America  has  yet  contributed  to  the 
universal  history  of  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity. 
The  period  covered  by  the  irrepressible  conflict  is, 
to  his  way  of  thinking,  preeminently  the  moral  age 
of  the  Republic;  and  to  his  mind  Garrison  and  Sum- 


VI  PREFACE. 

ner,  with  Wendell  Phillips,  constitute  the  three  prin 
cipal  figures  and  actors,  the  elect  and  glorified  spirits 
and  leaders  in  that  mighty  battle  of  Right  and  Wrong. 
As  this  volume  takes  its  place  in  the  series,  the 
earnest  wish  of  the  Author  goes  with  it  that  the  great 
example  herein  contained,  of  renunciation  of  self  for 
fellow-men,  of  absolute  devotion  to  duty,  of  incessant 
and  uncompromising  support  of  heaven-born  ideas 
and  principles,  and  of  magnificent  labors  in  the  cause 
of  a  common  humanity,  without  distinction  of  race, 
color,  or  condition,  may  be  to  many  a  savor  of  life 
unto  life  to  the  end  that  America,  like  the  Divine 
Parent,  shall  have  no  respect  to  the  persons  of  her 
children  whether  they  be  black  or  white,  but  shall 
treat  all  as  equals  throughout  her  broad  lands,  and 
before  the  genius  of  her  laws. 

HYDE  PARK,  MASS., 

December  30,  1891. 


CONTENTS. 


Preface 

CHAPTER   I. 
Ancestry  and  Antecedents 9-26 

CHAPTER  II. 
Preparation  and  Progress 27-56 

CHAPTER  III. 
Hercules  in  the  Nemean  Forest S7~92 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Period  of  Labor  Begins 93-I l% 

CHAPTER  V. 
Hercules  Tests   the  Temper  of  His  Weapons 119-145 

CHAPTER  VI. 
The  Lernsean  Hydra 146-161 

CHAPTER  VII. 
The  Long  Battle  Begins 162-186 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
'  The  Conflict  Thickens. .  187-213 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Defender  of  Humanity 214-244 

CHAPTER  X. 
Struggling  for  the  Floor 245-259 

CHAPTER  XI. 
Black  Spirits  and  White 260-300 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Red  Spirits  and  Grey 301-330 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Cathago  est  Delenda 33 1-363 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
Retronstoiction  and  Colored  Suffrage 364-391 

CHAPTER  XV. 
Character  and  Closing  Years 392-404 


CHARLES    SUMMER. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ANCESTRY    AND    ANTECEDENTS. 

CHARLES  SUMNER  was  born  in  the  West  End  of 
Boston,  January  6,  181 1.  The  founder  of  the  American 
branch  of  the  family,  William  Sumner,  emigrated 
from  England  with  his  wife,  Mary,  and  three  sons, 
about  the  year  1635,  and  settled  in  Dorchester,  in  the 
Colony  of  Massachusets  Bay.  There  and  in  Milton 
the  Sumners,  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  made  farming  pay,  turning  out  of  the 
stony  soil  golden  crops  in  more  senses  than  one.  For, 
while  they  increased  their  acres  and  builded  new 
barns,  they  also  laid  up  for  their  children  goodly 
shares  of  virtue  and  intelligence.  These  goodly  shares 
in  the  family  bank  of  character  and  ability  yielded 
every  now  and  then  an  extra  dividend  in  the  shape  of 
a  Sumner  of  unusual  force  and  distinction  in  society 
and  the  State. 

One  of  these  extra  dividends  upon  the  moral 
capital  of  the  family  was  Job  Sumner,  the  grand 
father  of  our  hero.  A  rather  remarkable  man,  with 
a  somewhat  remarkable  career,  was  Job  Sumner. 


'    CHARLES,  SUMNER. 


He  was  a  freshman  at  Harvard  University  when  the 
Battle  of  Lexington  was  fought.  The  emergency,  he 
perceived,  demanded  soldiers  not  scholars  then,  and 
boy  though  he  was,  and  thirsting  for  knowledge,  he 
promptly  determined  to  meet  the  demand  of  the  hour 
by  making  himself  into  a  soldier.  Accordingly,  a  few 
weeks  later  the  young  collegian  forsook  his  studies 
and  joined  the  American  Army  at  Cambridge,  subse 
quently  commanded  by  Washington.  That  Job  Sum- 
ner  had  in  him  the  stuff  of  which  soldiers  are  made  is 
shown  by  the  fact  of  his  entering  the  Continental  ser 
vice  as  an  ensign,  and  of  his  being  mustered  out  as  a 
major  at  the  close  of  the  war  for  independence. 

Besides  his  military  capacity,  Major  Sumner  was 
also  a  man  of  affairs,  and  attained  under  the  Con 
federation  distinction  as  a  civilian.  In  1785,  Congress 
entrusted  him  with  a  commission  to  adjust  the  ac 
counts  between  the  Confederation  and  Georgia. 
This  business  carried  him  South,  where  he  resided 
during  the  last  years  of  his  life.  These  last  years 
were  spent  by  him,  therefore,  in  the  very  heart  of  the 
slave  system.  The  precise  attitude  of  the  man, 
during  this  time,  toward  the  slave  system  cannot  now 
be  positively  known.  But  that  it  was  not  a  hostile  one 
may  reasonably  be  inferred  from  his  long  residence 
in  Georgia,  and  from  his  undoubted  popularity  in  the 
aristocratic  circles  there  —  a  thing  uite  unlikely  to 
occur  were  he  at  all  suspected  of  being  opposed  to 
slavery.  Indeed,  this  popularity  of  the  commissioner 
was  of  so  marked  a  character  that  there  ran  a  tradi 
tion  that  shortly  before  his  death  he  was  the  recipient 
of  a  very  large  vote  in  the  legislature  for  the  governor 
ship  of  the  State.  But  whether  this  last  is  fact  or  fancy, 


ANCESTRY    AND     ANTECEDENTS.  II 

so  much  may  be  set  down  as  morally  certain  that 
Major  Sumner's  status  in  Georgia  was  the  status  of  a 
friend  of  the  master,  not  of  the  slave.  He  was  not  a 
man  to  look  on  the  darker  side  of  life  in  general  or  of 
Southern  life  in  particular.  He  had  no  touch  of  the 
Puritan  in  his  constitution,  but  was  of  a  gay  and 
social  temper,  a  lover  of  music  and  hunting  songs, 
with  a  strain  of  the  cavalier  instead  in  his  disposi 
tion.  Upon  such  an  one  the  barbarism  of  slavery 
was  not  likely  to  produce  any  strong  impression.  On 
the  contrary,  upon  him  the  power,  the  leisure,  the 
outdoor  sports,  the  stately  manners,  the  lordly  hos 
pitality  and  the  baronial  splendor  of  the  masters  were 
calculated  to  exert  an  attraction  amounting  almost 
to  fascination.  All  this  magnificence  was  quite 
enough  to  dazzle  and  blind  the  moral  vision  of  a 
mere  man  of  the  world,  as  was  Major  Sumner,  to  the 
other  and  uglier  aspects  of  the  question,  to  those 
social  enormities  which  lay  at  the  centre  of  the  slave 
system  and  which  made  of  it  the  "sum  of  all  villainies." 
Job  Sumner  never  lost  his  thirst  for  knowledge. 
He  was  a  lifelong  lover  of  good  books  and  a  reader 
of  them  also.  His  appetite  for  learning  reappeared 
in  his  son,  and  drank  deep  of  the  Pierian  Spring  in 
the  scholarship  of  his  illustrious  grandson.  "Elo 
quence  and  manners  "  were  the  two  principle  points 
which  he  set  up  in  the  education  of  his  heir.  They 
with  "  wisdom  and  the  languages  "  seemed  to  him 
to  be  "  the  grand  pillars  of  all  great  objects  and  great 
men."  If  he  failed  in  respect  of  their  acquire 
ments  in  his  own  life,  he  meant  to  succeed,  if  possible, 
in  respect  of  them  in  the  life  of  his  child.  The  am 
bition  of  the  father  for  excellence  and  distinction 


12  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

descended  with  the  paternal  estate  to  the  son,  Charles 
Pinckney,  whose  name  bears  witness  to  the  Southern 
slant  of  Job  Sumner's  early  political  inclination  and 
sympathy. 

The  father  of  Charles  Sumner  was  of  another  mould 
than  the  grandfather.  Life  did  not  run  merrily  with 
him.  He  was  in  truth  a  reversion  to  the  stern  and 
sombre  type  of  the  Puritan.  The  love  of  books,  the 
scholarly  tastes,  the  ambition  for  excellence  and  dis 
tinction  he  inherited  from  Major  Sumner,  and  he 
bettered  his  inheritance.  Fortune  favored  the  son  in 
this  regard  as  it  did  not  favor  the  father.  For 
Charles  Pinckney  Sumner  received  the  education  of 
a  gentleman.  He  graduated  from  Harvard  College 
in  the  class  of  1796.  Subsequently  he  studied  law, 
and  began  its  practice  in  the  office  of  Josiah  Quincy, 
in  Boston,  about  1799.  But,  although  a  learned 
lawyer,  he  did  not  succeed  in  building  up  a  lucrative 
business.  His  practice  was  in  fact  quite  insignificant, 
altogether  inadequate  to  the  support  and  education 
of  an  increasing  family.  For,  notwithstanding  the 
gloomy  and  unsocial  character  of  the  young  attorney, 
he  was  evidently  of  the  general  opinion  of  mankind 
that  it  is  not  well  for  man  to  live  alone.  And  so,  in 
pursuance  of  this  sentiment,  he  wooed  Relief  Jacob, 
of  Hanover,  and  wedded  her  April  25,  1810.  She 
supplemented  the  deficiencies  of  the  husband  in  all 
respects  where  these  with  another  sort  of  wife 
might  have  affected  disastrously  the  happiness 
of  the  family.  She  was  a  woman  of  sterling  good 
sense,  of  splendid  physical  health,  of  an  equable  and 
a  cheerful  temper.  She.  made  a  model  mother  to  the 
children  of  Charles  Pinckney  Sumner. 


ANCESTRY    AND     ANTECEDENTS.  13 

Children  came  promptly  to  the  pair.  Nine  months 
after  their  marriage  the  young  wife  was  delivered  of 
twins — a  boy  and  a  girl.  The  boy  was  he  who  is  the 
subject  of  this  book.  At  the  end  of  ten  years  there 
was  a  family  of  four  boys  and  two  girls.  With  an 
increasing  family  of  children  there  fell  upon  their 
bread-winner  increasing  cares.  The  wherewithal  to 
fill  so  many  mouths,  both  of  the  mind  and  of  the 
body,  became  a  problem  doubtless  of  no  little  per 
plexity  and  difficulty  to  the  father  His  practice  of 
the  law  proving  unequal  to  the  exigency,  Mr.  Sumner 
abandoned  it  in  1819,  after  the  arrival  of  the  fifth 
mouth,  and  before  the  advent  of  the  sixth,  and  ac 
cepted  the  office  of  a  deputy  sheriff  for  Suffolk 
County,  from  which  he  derived  an  income  of  some 
thing  less  than  a  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Now, 
small  as  is  this  amount,  it  was  certain,  and  in  all  mat 
ters,  touching  the  support  of  a  poor  man's  family,  a 
bird  in  hand  is  worth  two  in  the  bush.  The  condi 
tion  of  the  Sumner  family  was  distinctly  bettered  by 
this  change.  The  two  ends  began  then  to  meet  much 
more  easily  and  comfortably,  thanks  always  to  the 
housewifely  management  and  thrift  of  the  mother. 

The  tide  of  fortune,  which  had  made  so  feeble  a 
beginning  for  the  Sumner  family,  flooded  in  1825 
when  the  ex-attorney  at  law  received  the  appoint 
ment  of  high  sheriff  for  Suffolk  County.  There  was 
from  that  time  a  decided  access  of  the  circulating 
medium  in  that  household.  Mr.  Sumner's  annual 
income  from  this  source  more  than  doubled,  and  dur 
ing  some  years  more  than  trebled  the  amount  of  the 
receipts  from  the  office  of  deputy  sheriff.  The  con 
tracted  circumstances  of  the  family  gave  place  to 


14  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ampler  living  and  prospects.  Directly  after  his  pro 
motion  to  the  shrievalty,  Mr.  Sumner  moved  his 
family  from  the  small  frame-house,  where  eight  of  his 
nine  children  were  born,  and  which  was  then  stand 
ing  on  the  southeast  corner  of  what  to-day  are 
known  as  Revere  and  Irving  streets,  then  May  and 
Buttolph,  to  the  more  commodious  dwelling,  number 
sixty-three  Hancock  street,  as  the  numbers  now  run. 
Five  years  later,  in  1830,  Mr.  Sumner's  improved  cir 
cumstances  enabled  him  to  purchase  number  twenty 
on  the  same  street  as  a  homestead,  which  was  so  oc 
cupied  thereafter  until  the  death  of  his  widow  in 
1866.  The  augmented  resources  of  the  father  bore 
other  fruits,  indicative  of  his  increased  official  and 
social  importance  in  the  city.  Twice  a  year  he  en 
tertained  at  dinner  the  judges,  members  of  the  bar, 
and  other  distinguished  gentlemen.  But  perhaps 
the  most  considerable  result,  which  the  favorable  turn 
in  the  father's  affairs  produced,  was  the  sending  to 
Harvard  of  his  eldest  son.  For  that  event  exercised 
no  slight  influence  in  the  elevation  of  the  Sumner 
name  and  character  to  the  national  regard  and  re 
nown,  to  which  they  subsequently  attained  in  the  life 
and  labors  of  that  selfsame  eldest  son. 

Mr.  Sumner  occupied  the  post  of  sheriff  fora  period 
of  nearly  fourteen  years,  until  in  fact  within  two 
weeks  of  his  death  on  April  24,  1839.  The  Sumner 
courage,  independence,  and  devotion  to  duty,  which 
developed  to  such  magnificent  proportions  in  the  son, 
the  father  possessed  to  a  marked  degree.  Where  duty 
called  him  no  danger,  however  stern,  was  able  to  deter 
him  from  appearing.  This  trait  of  the  man  found 
striking  illustration  in  1837  when  on  the  occasion  of 


ANCESTRY  AND  ANTECEDENTS.  15 


a  riot  in  Broad  street  he  read  amid  a  shower  of  mis 
siles  the  Riot  Act  to  the  rioters.  At  the  time  of  the 
Broadcloth  mob  which  drew  Garrison  through  the 
streets  of  Boston  his  courage  and  devotion  to  duty 
were  put  to  the  severest  test  in  the  strenuous  resistance 
which  he  as  sheriff  offered  to  that  pro-slavery  mob 
of  gentlemen  of  property  and  standing  in  the  com 
munity.  But  not  once  did  he  flinch  in  that  emergency, 
but  stood  stoutly  for  law  and  order  on  that  memor 
able  October  afternoon  in  1835,  throwing  himself  and 
his  deputies  intrepidly  between  the  murderous  rioters 
and  their  object,  and  earning  thereby  the  publicly  ex 
pressed  thanks  of  the  great  Abolitionist  wrhom  he  so 
bravely  protected. 

An  incident  in  the  summer  of  1836  evinced  the 
manly  stuff  of  which  his  independence  was  made. 
There  had  been  an  attempt  to  return  two  female 
fugitive  slaves  under  the  Act  of  1793  in  the  Supreme 
Judicial  Court  of  Massachusetts.  On  account  of  some 
technical  defect  in  the  proceedings  Chief  Justice 
Shaw  was  of  opinion  that  there  was  not  sufficient 
authority  to  hold  the  women,  and  so  remarked  in  a 
judicial  aside,  which  being  caught  by  Samuel  E. 
Sewall  who  was  acting  as  counsel  for  the  fugitives, 
was  quickly  communicated  by  him  to  their  friends  of 
which  there  were  not  a  few  in  the  court-room  at  the 
moment.  Whereupon  the  women  were  suddenly 
spirited  out  of  the  room  and  the  clutches  of  the  slave- 
catchers.  Of  course  the  baffled  slave-catchers  were 
enraged  ;  so  also  were  their  sympathisers  in  Boston. 
Such  a  miscarriage  of  pro-slavery  justice  in  1836  was 
a  rank  offense  in  the  nostrils  of  those  gentlemen  of 
property  and  standing,  who  not  one  year  before  had 


l6  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

overturned  law  and  order  in  the  city  for  the  sake  of 
putting  Abolition  down.  They  were  now,  however, 
terribly  scandalized  by  the  rampant  lawlessness  of  the 
two  wretched  women  and  their  friends  in  evading 
the  execution  of  a  statute  on  which  depended  the  peace 
and  stability  of  the  Union.  Great  failures,  or  little 
ones  for  that  matter,  require  a  scapegoat,  a  victim 
of  some  kind,  on  whose  head  all  blame  for  them 
may  be  laid.  Sheriff  Sumner  was  in  this  case  selected 
as  the  victim,  and  on  his  head  was  charged  the  respons 
ibility  for  the  escape.  Had  he  not  absented  himself 
at  the  time  from  the  particular  room  in  the  court 
house  where  the  fugitives  were  under  examination  ; 
had  he  provided  an  adequate  force  in  anticipation  of 
a  rescue — well  the  dignity  of  the  law  would  have  been 
sustained,  and  the  property  of  the  dear  South  faith 
fully  returned  under  the  Constitution.  He  was  besides 
accused  of  having  expressed  to  Samuel  E.  Sewall 
sympathy  with  the  women,  to  which  he  thus  boldly 
replied:  "  Whether  I  addressed  Mr.  Sewall,  as  it  is  said, 
I  cannot  tell;  but  I  should  be  ashamed  of  myself  if  I 
did  not  wish  that  every  person  claimed  as  a  slave 
might  be  proved  to  be  a  free  man,  which  is  the  purport 
of  the  words  attributed  to  me."  And  again  at  another 
time  he  wrote:  "  It  seems  to  me  as  if  there  were  some 
persons  in  Boston  who  would  have  been  gratified  to  see 
those  women  (after  being  liberated  from  one  unlaw 
ful  detention)  seized  in  the  court-house,  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  judge,  and  confined  till  proof  could  be 
sent  for  to  Baltimore,  and  from  thence  to  be  sent  to 
Boston,  to  make  them  slaves.  I  hope  the  walls  of  a 
Massachusetts  court-house  will  never  witness  such  a 
spectacle." 


ANCESTRY    AND     ANTECEDENTS.  17 

The  pro-slavery  tide  of  the  city  ran  so  strongly 
against  the  sheriff  in  consequence  of  his  alleged  re 
sponsibility  for  the  escape  of  the  two  women,  that 
Mr.  Sumner  tendered  to  Edward  Everett,  who  was 
then  Governor  of  the  State,  the  resignation  of  his 
office.  But  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  eloquent  dough 
face  executive  that  he  did  not  sacrifice  the  brave  old 
man  to  the  pro-slavery  clamor  of  his  constituents. 
The  love  of  liberty  of  Charles  Sumner's  father  cropped 
out  prominently  in  this  episode  of  the  slave  women. 
But  more  than  forty  years  before,  when  he  was  a 
senior  at  Harvard  College,  it  cropped  out  in  a  poem 
no  less  distinctly. 

"  No  sanctioned  slavery  Afric's  sons  degrade, 
But  equal  rights  shall  equal  earth  pervade," 

sang  the  young  disciple  of  democracy.  He  was,  in 
deed,  thorougly  anti-slavery,  seasoned,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  grain  and  fibre  of  him,  with  a  love  of  freedom 
and  equality.  At  a  time  when  the  prejudice  against 
color  was  universal,  and  most  barbarous  and  atro 
cious,  he  seemed  singularly  devoid  of  all  taint  of  its 
inhumanity.  To  the  colored  people  whom  he  met  on 
the  streets  of  the  city,  as  it  was  with  the  white  people, 
he  was  no  respecter  of  persons,  returning  salutation 
for  salutation  in  his  stiff,  ceremonious  manner.  He 
opposed  the  spirit  of  caste,  was  entirely  willing  to  oc 
cupy  a  seat  on  the  bench  by  the  side  of  a  negro 
judge,  was  opposed  to  the  exclusion  of  colored  chil 
dren  from  the  public  schools  of  the  city,  also  to  the 
statutory  prohibition  of  the  intermarriage  of  the  blacks 
and  the  whites.  He  was  particularly  pronounced 
against  the  lawless  demonstrations  in  the  North  to- 


l8  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ward  the  Abolition  movement.  He  was,  in  fine,  a  man 
who  was  immovably  anchored  to  liberty,  to  law,  and 
order.  As  early  as  1820,  he  entertained  startlingly 
bold  views  in  regard  to  the  conflict  between  freedom 
and  slavery  in  the  Union.  "Our  children's  heads," 
he  was  once  heard  to  say,  "  will  some  day  be  broken 
on  a  cannon-ball  on  this  question."  Little  dreamed 
he  at  the  time  that  the  head  of  his  nine-year-old  boy 
would  be  broken  among  the  first  of  the  heads  of  the 
then  rising  generation,  which  he  foresaw  were  destined 
to  so  tragic  a  fate.  His  Puritanic  abhorrence  of  vice 
led  him  as  early  as  1830  to  take  public  and  advanced 
ground  in  favor  of  temperance,  and  for  the  divorce  of 
the  State  from  the  Rum  Power.  During  his  student- 
years  at  Harvard  he  eagerly  anticipated  the  time 
"when  futile  war  shall  cease  thro'  every  clime." 
Take  what  we  already  know  of  him  in  connection 
with  the  laboriousness  and  thoroughness  with  which 
he  pursued  knowledge,  and  does  it  not  seem  that 
Charles  Pinckney  Sum  ner  was  designed  by  nature  for 
a  part  greater  than  the  one  played  by  him  in  society 
and  the  State?  The  design  was  defeated  by  some 
defect  of  character,  or  environment,  or  possibly  of 
both.  But  nature  in  this  instance  was  but  tempo 
rarily  balked  of  her  purpose.  For  what  was  wanting 
in  the  sire  she  mixed  with  no  niggard  hand  into  the 
mental  and  moral  qualities  of  the  son,  who  bore  not 
the  whole,  but  a  part  only  of  the  father's  name,  as  if 
to  mark  a  difference  which  controls  character  and 
destiny. 

Charles's  childhood  was  not  unlike  that  of  a  hun 
dred  other  boys  of  his  class  in  Boston  during  the 
same  period,  He  first  attended  a  private  school,  and 


ANCESTRY  AND  ANTECEDENTS.  IQ 

afterward  the  famous  Latin  School  of  the  city  where 
he  was  not  especially  distinguished  above  his  mates 
as  an  apt  scholar.  Indeed,  his  average  standing  was, 
perhaps,  not  much,  if  any,  above  mediocrity  during 
the  five  years  of  his  attendance  upon  this  school. 
He  was  weak  in  mathematics,  but  strong  in  the  Latin 
and  Greek  classics,  particularly  in  the  former,  which 
is  evinced  by  the  number  of  prizes  which  he  won  for 
translations  from  that  language  into  English  in  the 
years  1824  and  1826.  If  he  was  not  among  the  first 
of  his  class  in  the  prescribed  studies,  he  was  consid 
erably  in  advance  of  the  foremost  in  the  knowledge 
which  comes  from  general  reading,  especially  in  the 
departments  of  history  and  English  literature.  His 
appetite  in  respect  of  these  subjects  was  precocious 
and  enormous.  Like  Edmund  Burke  he  had  his 
furor  historicus,  which  comprehended  the  study  of 
geography  as  well.  This  and  his  passion  for  Belles 
Lettres  lasted  him  through  life.  But,  unlike  Burke,  he 
took  not  to  mathematical  subjects,  nor  to  those  of 
logic  or  metaphysics,  which  seemed  to  indicate  thus 
early  a  lack  of  versatility  and  symmetry  of  faculties. 
His  knowledge  of  books  in  general,  and  of  history  in 
particular,  was  the  wonder  of  his  mates.  The  water 
shed  of  his  mind,  so  to  speak,  if  wanting  in  the  di 
rection  of  the  exact  sciences  and  of  speculative  studies, 
was  of  amplitudinous  proportions  toward  the  quarter 
where  lie  the  humanities.  Metaphorically,  the  winds 
were  always  blowing  and  the  floods  ever  descending 
along  this  slant  into  his  mind.  The  boy  proved  the 
father  of  the  man  in  this  regard,  and  in  other  regards 
as  well. 

Quite  early  he    developed  a  remarkable    capacity 


20  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

for  sustained  labor  along  lines  of  his  own  choosing. 
If  he  attacked  a  book  of  history  he  went  at  it  with  an 
earnestness  and  a  thoroughness  which  left  no  page 
unappropriated,  no  place  unlocated  on  the  maps 
spread  out  before  him.  Even  when  a  mere  slip  of  a 
boy  he  did  nothing  by  halves.  The  pursuit  of  knowl 
edge  was  even  then  a  delight,  and  to  be  thorough  a 
necessity  of  his  nature.  There  was  nothing  inter 
mittent  and  gusty  in  his  energy  and  industry.  Con 
stancy  was  an  attribute  of  the  boy  as  it  was  later  of 
the  man.  In  truth,  this  precocious  capacity  for  sus 
tained  labor,  together  with  the  thoroughness  and 
constancy  with  which  the  boy  pursued  a  given  sub 
ject,  were,  as  we  look  back  over  those  early  years, 
nor  more  nor  less  than  the  obscure  dawn  of  the  man's 
future  noon. 

The  boy  possessed  a  natural  disinclination  to  the 
games  of  childhood.  There  was  an  infinite  amount 
of  study  in  him  but  precious  little  sport.  This  was 
at  once  his  strength  and  his  weakness.  For,  while  it 
served  to  place  him  en  rapport  with  great  men  and 
their  ideas  and  deeds,  it  operated  also  to  exclude 
him  too  much  and  too  early  from  the  real,  the  actual, 
in  our  work-a-day  world.  In  this  isolated  state 
knowledge  from  a  hundred  sources  in  the  world  ef 
letters  streamed  into  his  mind,  but  altogether  too 
little  found  its  way  there  directly  from  that  vast 
reservoir  of  all  knowledge — life  itself.  His  playfellows 
he  sought  in  the  realm  of  fancy  and  genius.  With 
them  he  found  himself  in  touch.  This  idiosyncrasy 
of  the  boy  left  its  limitations  upon  the  man.  The 
boy  had  no  capacity  for  play,  the  man  none  for 
humor.  A  certain  versatility  and  spontaneity  of 


ANCESTRY  AND  ANTECEDENTS.  21 

thought  and  feeling,  accordingly,  he  always  lacked. 
And,  lacking  them,  he  failed  to  reach  the  highest  rank 
in  eloquence,  either  popular  or  parliamentary. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  entered  Harvard  College. 
This  was  not,  however,  the  original  object  of  his 
desire  which  was  for  a  military  education.  This  wish 
of  the  boy  was  seconded  by  his  father  who  en 
deavored  to  find  an  opening  for  him  into  the  National 
Academy  at  West  Point.  The  ill  success  of  these 
endeavors,  together  with  the  favorable  turn  which 
the  affairs  of  Mr.  Sumner  took,  through  his  appoint 
ment  to  the  Suffolk  shrievalty,  probably  determined 
him  to  give  Charles  a  liberal  education.  And  so,  ot 
course,  he  was  sent  to  the  College  at  Cambridge. 
Here  the  youth  grew  in  mental  stature  but  away 
from  the  curriculum  standard  and  toward  the  innate 
forces  and  biases  of  his  mind.  His  inaptitude  for 
metaphysical  studies  was  palpable,and  in  mathematics 
he  was  a  flat  failure.  For  himself,  and  as  regards 
any  comprehension  of  those  subjects,  they  were 
"  Mathematics  piled  on  mathematics  !  Metaphysics 
murdered  and  mangled  ! "  during  the  entire  four 
years  of  the  course.  To  this  circumstance  was  un 
doubtedly  due  the  fact  that  in  rank  he  stood  well 
down  toward  the  middle  of  his  class.  In  a  class  of 
forty-eight  he  was  not  among  the  sixteen  who  were 
elected  into  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society. 

Notwithstanding  this  failure  of  young  Sumner  to 
take  high  rank  in  his  class,  his  industry  along  lines  of 
general  knowledge  was  extraordinary.  The  qualities 
which  we  have  already  noted  as  belonging  to  him, 
his  capacity  for  sustained  labor,  his  thoroughness 
and  constancy,  as  also  his  indisposition  to  mingle 


22  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

with  his  mates  in  their  sports  and  pastimes,  received 
during  these  years  the  most  emphatic  demonstra 
tion  and  development.  His  joy  was  in  exploring  a 
library  or  delving  into  works  of  history  and  general 
literature.  In  his  chosen  field  he  was  probably  with 
out  a  peer  among  his  fellows.  His  indefatigable  and 
prodigious  industry  made  marvel  for  youths  not  of 
his  class.  Wendell  .Phillips,  who  was  in  the  class 
just  below  him,  used  to  recall  how,  when  he  and 
others  of  the  students  were  wont  to  return  from  Boston 
in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  and  to  make  those 
hours  jocund  with  song  and  merriment,  they  would 
see  the  solitary  light  burning  in  Sumner's  window, 
and  would  know  by  that  sign  that  the  young 
scholar  was  still  poring  indefatigably  over  his 
books.  In  his  senior  year,  he  won  the  second 
Bowdoin  prize  of  thirty  dollars,  taking  for  his  theme 
"The  Present  Character  of  the  Inhabitants  of  New 
England,  as  Resulting  from  the  Civil,  Literary,  and 
Religious  Institutions  of  the  First  Settlers,"  in  whose 
composition  his  wide  reading  must  have  stood  him  in 
good  stead.  Other  qualities  than  those  already 
remarked  upon  began  during  his  four  years  at 
Harvard  to  disclose  themselves  saliently  in  his 
fast-forming  character.  One  of  these  was  a  con 
stitutional  inability  to  abandon  a  position-  when 
once  it  was  taken.  The  elements  were  so  mingled 
in  him  of  Saxon  phlegm  and  Puritan  seriousness  as 
to  interpose  an  almost  insurmountable  barrier  to 
changes  of  opinion.  One  of  his  classmates  recorded 
years  afterward  that  "  Sumner  was  not  in  the  habit 
of  changing  his  opinions  or  purposes.  He  adhered 
to  them  as  long  as  he  could.  If  he  had  an  idea  that 


ANCESTRY    AND     ANTECEDENTS.  23 

A  and  B  stood  the  highest  of  any  in  the  class,  nothing 
could  change  his  opinion,  except  their  having  the 
third  or  fourth  part  at  the  commencement."  There 
went  along  with  this  mental  immovability  or  inertia 
a  certain  dogmatism  and  finality  of  action.  He  was 
thus  strongly  held  to  an  original  bent  or  belief. 
Where,  metaphorically,  he  sat  down,  it  was  safe  to  say 
that  there  he  would  ever  afterward  be  found. 

That  enlargement  of  the  ego,  which  seems  to  be 
an  indispensable  ingredient  in  the  constitution  of 
powerful  personalities,  kept  pace  from  this  period  with 
the  growth  of  the  youth.  Whatever  else  our  young 
collegian  may  have  lacked  from  the  hand  of  Nature, 
he  was  assuredly  not  deficient  in  self-confidence 
and  self-esteem.  Humility  was  not  one  of  his  cardi 
nal  virtues.  On  the  contrary,  an  unconcealed  pride, 
of  self  and  consciousness  of  power  formed  the  basis 
of  his  character.  Here,  in  a  sense,  in  later  years  re 
sided  the  man's  centre  of  gravity. 

There  are  other  characteristics  which  were  found 
in  the  youth,  which  later  were  found  in  the  man. 
There  was  no  mystery  as  to  how  he  should  be  classified. 
He  was  always  and  distinctly  of  the  vertebrated  breed 
of  men.  Man's  crowning  quality  he  possessed  beyond 
the  ordinary  lot,  ability  to  stand  mentally  and  mon 
ally  erect  and  alone.  Strong  was  the  Saxon  passion 
for  personal  liberty  in  his  veins.  While  a  student,  he 
dared  to  disregard  a  college  regulation  which  in 
fringed  his  individual  right  to  determine  the  exact 
color  of  his  waistcoat.  He  was  admonished  that  a 
buff-colored  waistcoat  was  not  white,  but  Sumner 
contended  that  it  was  "  white,  or  nearly  enough  so  to 
comply  with  the  rule."  His  insistence  and  persistence, 


24  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

it  is  said,  finally  carried  the  point,  and  he  continued 
to  wear  the  waistcoat  of  his  choice,  the  admonitions 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  It  was  a  case  of 
color  blindness  with  a  vengeance.  Sumner  refused 
then  to  distinguish  buff  from  white,  as  he  refused 
subsequently  to  distinguish  black  from  the  self 
same  hue. 

His  will  even  then  had  the  character  of  adamant. 
A  resolution  once  formed  by  him  was,  humanly  speak 
ing,  as  sure  of  execution  as  that  day  would  follow 
night.  "  If  he  appointed  a  certain  evening  to  go  into 
Boston,"  a  classmate  records,  "  he  would  go  even  in  a 
violent  snow-storm."  And  to  go  into  Boston  from 
Harvard  square  in  those  days  under  the  circumstan 
ces,  and  before  the  age  of  horse-cars,  on  one's  own 
two  legs,  was  an  altogether  formidable  achievement. 
Between  a  fixed  purpose  and  its  end  he  allowed  no 
difficulties  to  daunt  or  deter  him.  The  youth's  will 
was  dictator.  If  it  said  do  this,  it  was  done;  go 
there,  there  he  went.  This  received  signal  illustra 
tion  the  year  after  his  graduation  when  he  devoted 
himself  to  making  up  his  deficiencies  in  a  branch  of 
knowledge  for  which  he  had  literally  no  taste  or  talent. 
But  by  sheer  strength  of  will  he  compelled  himself  to 
wrestle  with  the  roots  of  algebra  and  the  problems 
of  geometry  until  Jacob-like  he  had  wrested  from 
them  the  blessing  which  comes  from  earnest  struggle 
and  self-sacrifice.  He  never  became  proficient  in 
either,  but  the  trial  added,  without  doubt,  to  the 
muscularity  of  his  faculties,  moral  and  intellectual. 

Although  impatient  of  the  narrowness  and  intoler 
ance  of  the  Puritans,  he  was,  nevertheless,  a  true  son 
of  them  in  respect  of  the  supremacy  of  the  moral 


ANCESTRY  AND  ANTECEDENTS.  25 

sense.  Their  severe,  uncompromising  standard  in 
matters  of  morality  was  his  own.  Right,  duty,  con 
science,  were  from  childhood  with  him  not  mere  fine 
words  but  supreme  realities.  They  could  hardly  be 
otherwise  in  the  case  of  any  child  of  Sheriff  Sumner. 

We  are  struck  with  other  traits  in  studying  the  youth 
and  early  manhood  of  Charles  Sumner,  and  they  are 
his  sociability  and  his  sympathy.  As  a  youth  he  was 
full  of  geniality,  most  companionable,  notwithstand 
ing  his  sedentary  habits  and  devotion  to  books.  He 
made  friends — many  and  lasting  were  his  friendships. 
He  gave  himself,  the  best  in  him,  in  large  and  over 
flowing  helpfulness.  Whether  the  object  was  a  dying 
teacher,  or  a  struggling  scholar  it  made  no  difference. 
There  gushed  for  all  a  like  fullness  and  richness  of 
friendly  service.  Ever  ready  he  was  to  thrust  his 
neck  under  some  new  yoke,  to  offer  his  back  to  some 
fresh  burden,  for  friendship's  sake.  The  possessor  of 
sympathies,  at  once  sensitive  and  virile,  must  needs 
exercise  them  ~<;  the  seller  of  perfumes  must  needs 
scatter  as  he  goes  the  fragrance  of  his  wares.  These 
traits  when  coupled  with  the  force  of  conscience  which 
was  strong  within  him,  pointed  with  no  uncertainty  to 
a  life  of  usefulness,  if  not  to  a  career  of  greatness. 

Sumner  was  fortunate  in  his  environment.  The 
intellectual  life  of  Boston  sixty  years  ago  was  full  of 
those  notabilities  and  energies  of  the  pulpit,  the  bar, 
politics,  and  scholarship,  which  have  so  often  illus 
trated  the  city.  Webster,  then  in  the  zenith  of  his 
fame  and  genius  as  statesman,  orator,  and  jurist,  was 
a  familiar  figure  on  its  streets,  a  familiar  voice  in  its 
courts,  and  on  its  platforms.  Several  times  had 
Sumner  heard  him  in  the  old  town.  And  once,  indeed, 


26  CHARLES    SUMMER. 

the  great  man,  as  the  president  of  the  "  Boston  Soci 
ety  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,"  had 
taken  the  young  scholar  by  the  hand,  and  assured 
him  that  "the  public  held  a  pledge  of  him."  This 
was  on  the  occasion  of  an  essay  of  Sumner's  on  com 
merce  taking  the  prize  of  that  society  on  the  evening 
of  April  i,  1831. 

There  were  besides  in  politics  such  leaders  as  John 
Quincy  Adams  and  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  at  the  bar 
such  lights  as  Rufus  Choate  and  Franklin  Dexter,  in 
the  pulpit  such  orators  as  John  Pierpont  and  Lyman 
Beecher,  while  that  remarkable  man,  Josiah  Quincy, 
was  at  the  head  of  the  scholarship  of  the  old  town  as 
the  president  of  the  famous  seat  of  learning  just  across 
the  river.  The  atmosphere  was  full  of  literary  and 
professional  stimulus  and  ferment,  charged,  so  to 
speak,  with  those  fine  potencies  and  activities  which 
generate  in  communities  great  ambitions  and  aspir 
ations,  which  create  irrepressible  desires  and  striv 
ings  for  excellence  and  distinction  through  the  whole 
human  lump. 

Thus  equipped,  and  amid  conditions  and  circum 
stances  so  tonic,  stood  Charles  Sumner  with  the 
skeleton  key,  hard  work  in  his  hand,  and  the  magic 
word  "Excelsior"  on  his  lips,  those  two  instruments 
which  have  unlocked  to  many  a  youth,  high-born  and 
low-born,  the  portal  of  power  and  the  gate  to  glory. 


CHAPTER  II. 

PREPARATION  AND  PROGRESS. 

EVERY  time  a  great  man  comes  on  the  stage  of 
human  affairs,  the  fable  of  Hercules  repeats  itself. 
He  gets  a  sword  from  Mercury,  a  bow  from  Apollo, 
a  breastplate  from  Vulcan,  horses  from  Neptune,  a 
robe  from  Minerva;  /'.  e.,  many  streams  from  many 
sources  bring  to  him  their  united  strength.  How 
otherwise  would  the  great  man  be  equal  to  his  hour 
and  task  ?  This  wonderful  truth,  sealed  within  the 
myth,  found  fresh  manifestation  in  the  life  of  Sumner. 

The  year  after  his  graduation  from  Harvard  Col 
lege,  viz.,  1830-31,  he  spent  at  his  home  in  the  midst 
of  books,  which  he  continued  to  devour  with  increas 
ing  voracity.  His  truly  extraordinary  acquisitiveness 
sucked  up  the  contents  of  books  during  the  year  as  a 
huge  sponge  thrown  into  a  tub  of  water  sucks  up  the 
water.  There  was  undoubtedly  too  much  of  the 
sponge-like  absorption  of  the  contents  of  books  and 
not  enough  of  proper  digestion  and  assimilation  of 
them,  but  on  the  whole  the  pabulum  served  fairly 
well  to  nourish  the  bone  and  muscle  forming  proc 
esses  of  his  rapidly  developing  mind.  And  so  the 
twelve  months  were  not  wasted,  but  added  rather 
their  contribution  of  acquisition  and  reflection  to  the 
great  preparation. 


28  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

The  year  was,  however,  not  altogether  a  happy  one 
for  the  young  scholar.  He  needed  appreciation, 
sympathy  ;  but  from  his  family  he  got  neither.  Not 
that  they  were  wanting  in  natural  affection.  Not  at 
all,  but  only  in  the  expression  of  the  real  love  and 
pride  with  which  they  regarded  him.  They  were 
evidently  a  rather  cold,  undemonstrative  household. 
This  was,  as  regards  the  father,  particularly  true. 
His  severe  and  sombre  temper  exerted,  in  all  prob 
ability,  a  repressing  and  depressing  influence  upon 
his  children,  excluded  too  early  and  too  much  the 
sunshine  from  their  young  faces  and  hearts,  and,  in 
consequence,  cut  them  off  from  those  mutual  and 
pretty  confidences  and  intimacies,  which  are  the 
charm  of  domestic  life.  Sumner,  with  his  unusual 
development  of  the  bump  of  approbativeness,  felt  this 
lack  of  his  family  very  keenly.  He  yearned  for  ap 
preciation,  for  encouragement.  To  him,  with  his 
growing  ego,  these  things  were  food  and  drink,  their 
want  was  no  light  affliction.  To  one  of  his  old  col 
lege  mates,  Jonathan  F.  Stearns,  he  wrote:  "  I  think 
of  hitching  upon  the  law  at  Cambridge  this  coming 
commencement.  I  am  grateful  for  the  encouraging 
word  you  give  me.  I  am  rather  despondent,  and  I 
meet  from  none  of  my  family  those  vivifying  expres 
sions  which  a  young  mind  always  heartily  accepts. 
My  father  says  naught  by  way  of  encouragement. 
He  seems  determined  to  let  me  shape  my  own  course, 
that  if  I  am  wise  I  shall  be  wise  for  myself ;  and  if  I 
am  foolish,  I  alone  shall  bear  it." 

This  experience,  painful  as  it  was  to  Sumner,  was, 
after  all,  not  a  bad  thing  to  happen  to  the  youth.  It 
checked,  kept  within  moderation  the  growth  of  the 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  29 

ego  which  needed  but  the  fallow  soil  of  demonstra 
tive  family  affection  and  hero-worship  to  cause  it  to 
shoot  up  and  out  beyond  all  true  proportions  to  the 
rest  of  his  faculties.  The  steady  current  of  this  fam 
ily  north  wind  snubbed  the  tendency  to  put  forth  too 
rapidly  on  the  egoistic  side  of  the  son's  character, 
and  so  preserved  a  proper  balance  of  his  forces.  And 
this  was  of  the  utmost  importance  to  him  both  in  re 
ceiving  and  giving,  especially  just  then  in  respect  of 
the  first  of  these  functions.  On  contact  and  associa 
tion  with  superior  minds  he  \vas  to  obtain  no  insig 
nificant  share  of  his  outfit  for  the  great  part,  which 
later  he  was  to  play  in  the  history  of  his  country.  At 
the  end  of  these  months  at  home  this  new  source  of 
incalculable  influence  was  opened  to  the  young  man 
by  the  side  of  that  full  stream  which  was  flowing  into 
his  mind  from  the  Pierian  spring  of  books.  Thence 
forth  they  were  to  carry  to  him  in  parallel  channels 
knowledge  and  wisdom.  The  choice  of  a  profession 
and  his  return  to  Cambridge  may  be  said  to  mark 
the  end  of  the  first  and  rudimentary  stage  of  Sum- 
ner's  apprenticeship,  and  the  beginning  of  its  second 
and  more  serious  term.  The  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  boyhood  were  left  altogether  behind  the  young 
man,  who  became  thereafter  wholly  taken  up  with 
the  things  that  belong  to  manhood  and  to  the  estate  of 
a  scholar.  The  passion  for  labor,  for  excellence, 
burned  with  new  ardor  within  him.  In  his  scholarly 
enthusiasm  time  appeared  to  him  as  more  precious 
than  silver,  and  it  seemed  "that  every  moment,  like 
a  filing  of  gold,  ought  to  be  saved." 

The  ideal  of  the  lawyer,  which  he  hung  up  in  his 
mind,  was   of  the  loftiest.     "  A    lawTyer   must   know 


30  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

everything,"  wrote  the  young  disciple  of  Blackstone 
to  a  friend.  "  He  must  know  law,  history,  philos 
ophy,  human  nature  ;  and,  if  he  covets  the  fame  of  an 
advocate,  he  must  drink  of  all  the  springs  of  litera 
ture,  giving  ease  and  elegance  to  the  mind  and  illus 
tration  to  whatever  subject  it  touches."  For  the 
opposite  of  this  noble  ideal,  the  mere  practitioner, 
he  had  thus  early  a  seated  loathing.  "  I  had  rather 
be  a  toad,"  said  he,  "and  live  upon  a  dungeon's  vapor 
than  one  of  those  lumps  of  flesh  that  are  christened 
lawyers,  and  who  know  only  how  to  wring  from 
quibbles  and  obscurities  that  justice,  which  else  they 
never  could  reach  ;  who  have  no  idea  of  law  beyond 
its  letter,  nor  of  literature  beyond  their  term  reports 
and  statutes.  If  I  am  a  lawyer,  I  wish  to  be  one  who 
can  dwell  upon  the  vast  heaps  of  law-matter,  as  the 
temple  in  which  the  majesty  of  right  has  taken  its 
abode  ;  who  will  aim,  beyond  the  mere  letter,  at  the 
spirit — the  broad  spirit  of  the  law — and  who  will 
bring  to  his  aid  a  liberal  and  cultivated  mind." 

And,  significantly  enough,  the  moral  and  humane 
aspects  of  his  chosen  profession  strongly  attracted 
him  to  it  from  the  start.  It  was  not  merely  the  lucre 
and  the  fame  which  it  offered  him,  though  they,  of 
course,  had  their  influence,  especially  the  latter. 
But  beyond  and  above  the  purely  personal  benefits 
which  the  law  held  for  its  votaries,  he  discovered 
another  and  nobler  element,  an  altruistic  good.  The 
lawyer,  if  worthy  of  his  high  calling,  was  the  custo 
dian  of  social  justice,  the  guardian  of  the  sources 
of  the  rights  of  person  and  of  property,  the  cham 
pion  of  civil  and  political  liberty.  According  as 
he  shapes  his  course  he  may  be  one  of  the  best  or 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  31 

worst  of  men.  He  may  be  a  fomenter  of  quarrels 
between  man  and  man,  or  a  healer  of  their  dissensions. 
He,  too,  may  be  a  real  evangel,  a  proclaimer  of  peace 
and  good-will  on  earth — may  be  the  lawyer,  as  truly 
as  ever  minister  of  religion  was.  "  For,"  as  our 
student  reasoned,  "  religion  exists  independent  of  its 
ministers  ;  every  breast  feels  it;  but  the  law  lives 
only  in  the  honesty  and  learning  of  lawyers."  He 
was  keenly  alive  to  the  splendid  opportunities  which 
the  legal  profession  presented  to  him  of  unselfish 
service  to  his  kind,  and  almost,  even  then,  exaltedly 
conscious  of  the  corresponding  responsibilities  which 
they  imposed  upon  him  as  a  friend  of  man.  His 
letters  at  this  period  are  full  of  the  ardor  of  the 
scholar  and  the  moral  glow  of  disinterested  desire. 

In  his  teachers,  Judge  Story,  Professor  Ashmun, 
and  later  Professor  Greenleaf,  he  was  fortunate, 
indeed.  The  relationship  which  almost  immediately 
sprang  up  between  him  and  each  of  these  eminent 
men  was  one  of  mutual  and  intimate  friendship, 
embracing  at  once  the  pride  and  affection  of  the  mas 
ter  for  a  favorite  pupil,  and  that  pupil's  ardent  admi 
ration  and  devotion  in  return.  Sumner's  industry 
and  enthusiasm,  his  singleness  of  purpose  and  the 
breadth  of  his  intelligence,  were  enough  to  attract  to 
him  the  eyes  of  quite  ordinary  instructors.  But  his 
teachers  were  not  ordinary  masters  of  the  law,  and 
so  these  qualities  of  the  disciple  drew  them  to  him  as 
to  a  kindred  spirit.  The  tie  between  them  seemed  half 
paternal,  half  fraternal.  Sumner  was  a  sort  of  pro 
fessional  son  and  heir  to  their  chairs  and  learning,  a 
kind  of  younger  comrade  and  brother  in  their  labors 
and  achievements.  The  second  of  these  professors 


32  CHARLES    SUMNEP. 

Sumner  helped  to  nurse  during  his  last  sickness,  and 
watched  alone  by  his  couch  when  he  died.  And 
it  was  he,  the  faithful  disciple,  who  collected  funds 
for  a  monument  with  which  to  mark  the  last  resting 
place  of  the  dead  friend  and  master. 

His  privileges  were  great,  but  never  did  pupil 
value  them  more  highly  than  did  Sumner.  With 
Judge  Story  his  relations  were  peculiarly  close.  He 
was  the  jurist's  correspondent  when  absent  in  Wash 
ington  and  on  his  circuit,  keeping  him  the  while  in 
touch  with  the  happenings  of  the  university  in  gene 
ral,  and  with  those  at  the  Law  School  in  particular. 
Many  were  the  kindly  offices  which  the  pupil  per 
formed  for  the  master  during  these  months  when  the 
duties  of  the  Supreme  Court  engaged  his  presence 
elsewhere.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  beauty  of  the 
friendship  between  the  older  and  the  younger  man. 
The  regard  of  the  judge  for  Sumner  was  shared  by 
his  family.  In  it  the  favorite  pupil  was  like  an  older 
son.  And  no  son  could  indeed  watch  with  livelier 
interest  and  satisfaction  the  growing  fame  of  the 
great  jurist,  as  judge  and  publicist.  Between  Sum 
ner  and  the  professor's  son,  William  W.  Story,  then 
a  mere  slip  of  a  boy,  there  sprang  up  an  altogether 
charming  friendship,  a  repetition  in  miniature  of  that 
between  the  father  and  Sumner. 

That  boy,  since  famous  in  art  and  literature,  has 
preserved  his  recollections  of  his  and  his  father's 
friend.  They  were  written  many  years  later,  after 
the  death  of  that  friend  in  fact,  but  the  years  could 
not  rob  them  of  the  freshness  and  grace  of  those 
green  and  fragrant  days  when  he  made  the  ac 
quaintance  of  the  tall,  ungainly  law-student  whose 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  33 

personality  and  conversation  so  fascinated  him,  that, 
in  his  own  words,  "  When  I  heard  that  he  was  in  the 
room,  I  quitted  all  occupations  to  see  and  hear  him, 
though  for  the  most  part  I  only  piayed  the  role  of  a 
listener."  Many  an  evening  he  used  to  spend  with 
Sumner  at  his  room  in  the  Dane  Law  School,  reading 
Latin  with  him,  and  talking  with  him  over  the  ancient 
authors.  Sumner,  with  his  erudition  and  enthusiasm, 
had  the  art  to  render  these  evenings  most  agreeable 
to  the  boy.  "  He  talked  of  Cicero  and  Caesar,"  Wil 
liam  Story  recalled  forty  years  afterward;  "of  Hor 
ace,  Virgil,  Tacitus,  Sallust,  and  indeed  of  all  the 
old  Latin  writers  ;  of  the  influence  they  had  on  their 
age,  and  their  age  had  on  them  ;  of  the  characteris 
tics  of  their  poetry  and  prose  ;  of  the  peculiarities  of 
their  style  ;  of  the  differences  between  them  and  our 
modern  authors  ;  and  he  so  talked  of  them  as  to 
interest  and  amuse  me,  and  bring  them  before  me  as 
real  and  living  persons  out  of  the  dim,  vague  mist  in 
which  they  had  hitherto  stood  in  my  mind.  We  used 
then,  also,  to  cap  Latin  verses;  and  he  so  roused  my 
ambition  not  to  be  outdone  by  him,  that  I  collected 
from  various  authors  a  book  full  of  verses,  all  of 
which  I  committed  to  memory.  Of  course,  he  beat 
me  always,  for  he  had  a  facile  and  iron  memory 
which  easily  seized  and  steadily  retained  everything 
he  acquired." 

This  "facile  and  iron  memory"  was  one  of  Sum- 
ner's  principal  endowments.  It  attracted  the  notice 
of  the  father  as  well  as  of  the  son.  Judge  Story- 
remarked  upon  it  and  its  characteristics  at  one  of  his 
Sunday  evenings  at  the  home  of  President  Quincy. 
Said  he,  Sumner  being  the  subject  of  conversa- 
3 


34  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tion  between  those  eminent  men:  "He  has  a  won 
derful  memory  ;  he  keeps  all  his  knowledge  in 
order,  and  can  put  his  hand  on  it  in  a  moment. 
This  is  a  great  gift."  It  is  undoubtedly  a  great  gift, 
and  it  was  to  be  of  immense  utility  to  its  possessor  in 
the  leading  role  which  later  he  was  to  enact  on  the 
stage  of  the  Union. 

At  the  home  of  President  Quincy,  in  Cambridge, 
Sumner  was  a  familiar  and  frequent  visitor.  Their 
friendship  was  lifelong,  and  it  was  Mrs.  Quincy,  who, 
probably  among  the  very  first,  foresaw  a  future  for 
him.  A  daughter,  Mrs.  Waterston,  remembered  long 
years  afterward,  "  the  tall,  spare  form  and  honest 
face  of  Charles  Sumner"  at  her  mother's  Thursday 
evening  receptions.  In  her  journal  she  recorded  her 
impressions  of  the  young  friend  of  her  father.  "  This 
youth,"  she  wrote,  "though  not  in  the  least  hand 
some,  is  so  good-hearted,  clever,  and  real,  that  it  is 
impossible  not  to  like  him  and  believe  in  him." 
This  seems  to  have  been  the  universal  opinion  of  his 
early  friends.  Serious  he  was  but  withal  genial  too, 
a  capital  talker,  he  was,  at  that  period,  a  still  more 
capital  listener.  Books  he  delighted  in,  but  he 
delighted  even  more,  if  such  a  thing  was  possible,  in 
intercourse  with  learned  men.  And  as  he  valued  and 
cherished  his  books,  he  valued  and  cherished  not  less 
his  companionship  with  scholars  and  thinkers.  Noth 
ing  could  exceed  the  pious  respect,  nay,  reverence 
even,  with  which  he  conducted  himself  toward  his 
seniors,  such  as  were  President  Quincy,  Judge  Story, 
and  Professor  Greenleaf,  while  toward  his  equals  and 
his  juniors  in  age  he  was  the  impersonation  of  kind 
liness,  simplicity,  and  manliness. 


PREPARATION  AND  PROGRESS.  35 

W.  W.  Story  has  preserved  an  amusing  instance  of 
the  young  law-student's  absorption  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge  and  of  his  preference  for  the  society  of 
men  over  that  of  women.  "  Of  all  men  I  ever  knew 
at  his  age,"  says  Mr.  Story,  "  he  was  the  least  sus 
ceptible  to  the  charms  of  women.  Men  he  liked  best, 
and  with  them  he  preferred  to  talk.  It  was  in  vain 
for  the  loveliest  and  liveliest  girl  to  seek  to  absorb 
his  attention.  He  would  at  once  desert  the  most 
blooming  beauty  to  talk  to  the  plainest  of  men.  This 
was  a  constant  source  of  amusement  to  us,  and  we 
used  to  lay  wagers  with  the  pretty  girls,  that  with 
all  their  art  they  could  not  keep  him  at  their  side  a 
quarter  of  an  hour.  Nor  do  I  think  we  ever  lost  one  of 
these  bets.  I  remember  particularly  one  dinner  at  my 
father's  house,  when  it  fell  to  his  lot  to  take  out  a 
charming  woman,  so  handsome  and  full  of  esprit  that 
anyone  at  the  table  might  well  have  envied  him  his 
position.  She  had  determined  to  hold  him  captive, 
and  win  her  bet  against  us.  But  her  efforts  were  all 
in  vain.  Unfortunately,  on  his  other  side  was  a 
dry  old  savant,  packed  with  information  ;  and  within 
five  minutes  Sumner  had  completely  turned  his  back 
on  his  fair  companion,  and  engaged  in  a  discussion 
with  the  other,  which  lasted  the  whole  dinner.  We 
all  laughed.  She  cast  up  her  eyes  deprecatingly, 
acknowledged  herself  vanquished,  and  paid  her  bet. 
He  had  what  he  wanted — sensible  men's  talk.  He 
had  mined  the  savant,  as  he  mined  everyone  he  met, 
in  search  of  ore,  and  was  thoroughly  pleased  with 
what  he  got." 

During  the  latter  part  of  Sumner's  law-studentship 
at  Cambridge,  he  held  the  post  of  librarian  of  the  Law 


36  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Library.  It  is  said  that  so  thoroughly  and  minutely 
did  he  know  his  domains,  that  he  could  put  his  hand 
on  any  volume  in  the  dark.  But  his  knowledge  of 
them,  it  need  hardly  be  added,  was  by  no  means 
limited  to  their  location  on  the  shelves.  It  extended 
to  their  contents  and  authorships  as  well.  There 
was  scarcely  a  text-book  among  them  with  which  he 
did  not  have  more  than  a  superficial  acquaintance. 
He  could  tell,  besides,  the  manner  of  men  who  had 
written  them.  When  he  read  a  book  he  at  once 
inquired  after  the  man  behind  it — who  had  written 
it.  He  studied  him,  made  him  live  and  move  before 
the  mind's  eye,  then  he  appropriated  him  and  his 
works  to  himself  and  his  friends  forever  after.  He 
obtained  thus  a  sort  of  incorporeal  hereditament  and 
fee  simple  in  the  labor  and  learning  of  other  lives. 

During  this  period  Sumner  prepared  a  catalogue 
of  the  library,  which  by  competent  judges  was  con 
sidered  excellent.  Professor  Story  was  especially 
well  pleased  with  it,  for  it  added,  no  doubt,  not  a 
little  to  the  equipment  and  efficiency  of  the  college 
as  a  place  for  study  of  the  law.  Amid  incessant  and 
excessive  attention  given  to  legal,  classical,  and  lite 
rary  readings  and  acquisitions,  the  young  scholar 
began  about  this  time  to  write  for  the  American  Jurist, 
a  magazine  devoted  to  juridical  subjects  and  litera 
ture,  and  also  for  the  American  Monthly  Review.  His 
articles  were  learned,  and  "  full  of  useful  comment 
and  research,"  to  apply  a  phrase  of  Judge  Story's  in 
relation  to  one  of  them — to  all  of  them.  He  found 
time  also  to  compete  for  a  Bowdoin  prize,  and  to  win 
it  into  the  bargain.  The  contestants  were  limited  to 
resident  graduates,  who  were  required  to  write  on 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  37 

the  theme  "  Are  the  most  important  changes  in  so 
ciety  effected  gradually  or  by  violent  revolutions  ?" 
Sumner's  thesis  adopted  and  enforced,  by  a  wide 
historical  view  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  doctrine  of  social  evolution  or  gradualism  as  the 
most  potent  factor  in  the  production  of  important 
changes  in  modern  civil  society.  Nevertheless  he 
perceives  the  sublime  utility  of  violent  revolutions  at 
emergent  moments  in  the  progress  of  humanity,  and 
quotes  John  Milton,  himself  a  revolutionist,  in  justifi 
cation  of  them:  "For  surely,  to  every  good  and 
peaceable  citizen,  it  must  in  nature  needs  be  a  hateful 
thing  to  be  the  displeaser  and  molester  of  thousands. 
But  when  God  commands  to  take  the  trumpet  and 
blow  a  dolorous  or  a  jarring  blast,  it  lies  not  in  man's 
will  what  he  shall  say  or  what  he  shall  conceal."  The 
evident  admiration  of  the  essayist  for  this  stern 
sentiment  of  the  great  English  reformer  was  one  of 
those  "  coming  events  "  which  are  reputed  to  cast  their 
shadows  before.  Should  God  ever  command  him  "  to 
take  the  trumpet  and  blow  a  dolorous  or  a  jarring 
blast,"  it  is  clear  that  like  his  Puritan  kin  across  the 
sea,  he  would  elect  to  obey  God  rather  than  men. 
Reading  between  the  lines,  we  catch  the  high  thought 
of  the  young  scholar  in  respect  of  the  part  he  meant  to 
play,  if  it  should  please  God  to  cast  his  lot  amid  similar 
circumstances.  About  this  time  he  took  a  lively  and 
practical  interest  in  temperance  reform,  and,  when  in 
March,  1833,  a  society  was  organized  in  the  Univer 
sity,  he  was  chosen  its  first  president.  "  A  peculiar 
life-and-death  earnestness,"  says  Rev.  A.  A.  Liver- 
more,  the  first  vice-president  of  the  society,  "  char 
acterized  even  then  all  that  Sumner  did  and  said." 


38  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

And  Rev.  Samuel  Osgood,  its  first  secretary,  recalls 
that  "  He  had  great  strength  of  conviction  on  ethical 
subjects  and  decided  religious  principle  ;  yet  he  was 
little  theological,  much  less  ecclesiastical."  This  de 
scription  of  the  religious  attitude  of  the  young 
scholar  finds  confirmation  in  one  of  his  private  letters, 
written  in  January,  1833,  to  his  friend,  Jonathan  F. 
Stearns,  "  I  am  without  religious  feeling,"  he  frankly 
confesses,  and  goes  on  with  his  self-revelation  in  this 
wise  :  "  I  seldom  refer  my  happiness  or  acquisitions 
to  the  Great  Father  from  whose  mercy  they  are 
derived.  Of  the  first  great  commandment,  then, 
upon  which  so  much  hangs,  I  live  in  perpetual  un 
consciousness — I  will  not  say  disregard,  for  that, 
perhaps,  would  imply  that  it  was  present  in  my 
mind.  I  believe,  though,  that  my  love  to  my  neigh 
bor,  namely,  my  anxiety  that  my  fellow-creatures 
should  be  happy,  and  disposition  to  serve  them  in 
their  honest  endeavors,  is  pure  and  strong.  Certainly, 
I  do  feel  an  affection  for  everything  that  God  created  ; 
and  this  feeling  is  my  religion." 

At  the  end  of  the  year  1833,  Sumner  graduated  from 
the  Dane  Law  School,  and  entered  forthwith  the  office 
of  Benjamin  Rand  in  Boston  to  obtain  a  practical 
knowledge  of  procedure  in  the  courts.  This  knowl 
edge  was  necessary  to  his  complete  equipment  for 
the  career  of  a  lawyer,  which  he  was  strongly  desirous 
of  pursuing.  Nothing  less  than  a  sense  of  its  necessity 
could  have  separated  him  at  the  time  from  the  law 
school,  which  was  growing  fast  and  far  in  favor  and 
fame,  under  the  brilliant  professional  management  of 
his  friends  and  masters,  Story  and  Greenleaf.  The 
college  in  the  autumn  of  1833  numbered  upwards  of 


PREPARATION  AND  PROGRESS.  39 

fifty  students,  which  was  probably  at  that  date  the 
largest  collection  of  young  men  who  had  ever  gathered 
in  one  place  in  America  for  the  study  of  the  law. 
With  the  continued  increase  of  students  there  would 
presently  come  an  addition  to  the  teaching  force  of 
the  school.  Professor  Story  counted  quite  confidently 
on  an  early  reinforcement  of  his  own  and  Professor 
Greenleaf's  labors  in  this  regard,  and  with  no  less  con 
fidence  on  the  return  then  of  Sumner  to  the  school  as 
the  new  colleague.  Indeed,  so  large  a  void  was  created 
in  Cambridge  by  the  absence  of  the  young  scholar 
that  Judge  Story  urged  him,  a  few  months  after  he 
had  left  for  the  law  office  in  Boston,  to  return  to  the 
school  as  an  associate  instructor  therein.  But  Sumner 
was  too  firmly  joined  to  his  ambition  for  a  forensic 
career  to  surrender  it  even  to  oblige  the  judge,  or  for 
the  sake  of  enjoying  academic  honors  and  pursuits, 
dearly  as  he  loved  both.  And  so  the  offer  was  declined. 
His  refusal  to  return  to  Cambridge  was  not,  under 
the  circumstances,  surprising.  For  he  was,  as  all 
students  of  the  law  are  apt  to  be,  fascinated  by  the 
struggles  and  triumphs  of  the  forum,  and  desirous 
of  following  in  the  steps  of  the  great  advocates.  Sum 
ner  naturally  enough  had  his  illusions  in  respect 
of  his  fitness  for  sustaining  such  a  role — illusions  which 
nothing  less  hard  than  experience  was  equal  to  break 
ing.  But  whoever  undertakes  to  practice  law  will 
find  that  in  whatever  else  he  may  be  lacking  it  will 
not  be  in  experience.  Clients  may  fail,  but  experience 
will  never — experience  of  an  altogether  disillusioning 
sort,  as  multitudes  of  young  aspirants  for  the  mantles 
of  Erskine  and  Choate  learn  them  every  year  at  the 
bar. 


40  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Sumner  however,  even  in  the  neophyte  state,  was 
not  without  misgivings  as  to  whether  he  possessed 
the  qualifications  indispensable  to  the  successful  prac 
titioner  in  the  rough  and  tumble  of  the  arena  of 
courts.  His  old  classmate,  John  W.  Browney  him 
self  a  lawyer,  had  not  any  doubt  of  Sumner's  defi 
ciency  in  the  qualities  essential  to  success  in  "  harsh, 
everyday  practice.  "  "  You  are  not  rough-shod 
enough,"  Brown  wrote  him,  "to  travel  in  the  stony 
and  broken  road  of  homely,  harsh,  everyday  practice." 
He  did  not  think  that  Sumner  was  fashioned  for  that 
kind  of  life  either  by  the  hand  of  nature  or  in  the 
school  of  experience.  He  had  indeed  lived  among 
books,  and  away  from  all  except  one  class  of  mind.  He 
knew  books,  but  next  to  nothing  of  men,/,  e.,  the  sort 
of  men  who  do  business  before  courts.  Brown  justly 
observed  that  all  Sumner's  inclinations  and  habits  set 
him  on  "  with  a  strong  tendency  toward  a  green  emin 
ence  of  fame  and  emolument  "in  his  profession,"  but 
you  are  not  destined  to  reach  it,"  he  added  sagely,  "  by 
traveling  through  the  ordinary  business  of  a  young 
lawyer  in  the  courts."  He,  therefore,  urged  Sumner 
to  fall  in  with  the  offer  of  Judge  Story,  and  return  to 
Cambridge.  But  Sumner,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
was  of  another  mind,  and  he  accordingly  persevered 
in  his  purpose  to  enter  upon  the  "  harsh,  everyday 
practice  "  of  his  profession,  the  invitation  of  Judge 
Story,  and  the  counsel  of  Brown  to  the  contrary  not 
withstanding. 

Sumner  was  always  for  going  to  the  fountain-head 
for  any  knowledge  which  he  wanted.  And  as  he 
was  now  acquainting  himself  with  legal  procedure 
and  the  conduct  of  causes,  he  turned  to  the  Su- 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  41 

preme  Court  at  Washington,  as  to  a  peculiarly  fit 
place  to  pursue  his  studies.  So,  in  the  winter  of  1834, 
only  a  few  weeks  after  his  graduation  from  the  Law 
School  at  Cambridge,  he  betook  himself  off  to  the 
national  capitol.  He  went  armed  cap-a-pie  with 
letters  intruducing  him  to  various  distinguished 
people  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  and  with  his 
eyes  wide  open  to  what  there  was  to  see  and  learn  by 
the  way.  The  journey  in  those  days  from  Boston  to 
Washington  was  made  almost  wholly  in  coaches  and 
steamboats,  for,  be  it  remembered,  that,  in  1834  the 
railroad  era  was  but  just  beginning.  The  novelty  of 
the  new  motor  power  of  transportation  by  steam, 
when  Sumner  made  his  visit  to  Washington,  pro 
duced  the  most  agreeable  sensations  of  surprise  and 
wonder  in  the  minds  of  travelers,  accustomed  to  the 
old  means  of  locomotion  by  wind  and  horses.  "  There 
is  something  partaking  of  the  sublime,"  wrote  Sum 
ner  to  a  fourteen-year-old  sister,  "  in  the  sense  that  you 
are  going  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  drawn 
by  an  insensible  agent,  the  contrivance  of  man,  who 
has  "sought  out  many  inventions  "  ;  enjoying,  if  you 
are  in  a  boat,  all  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  the  finest 
hotel,  walking  over  carpets  or  sitting  at  a  table 
loaded  with  all  the  products  of  the  season  ;  or,  if  in 
a  railroad  car,  enjoying  at  least  a  comfortable  and 
easy  seat,  from  which  you  may  see  the  country  over 
which  you  are  flying  as  a  bird." 

At  New  York,  our  traveler  visited  Chancellor  Kent, 
whose  conversation  he  found  "  lively  and  instructive, 
but  grossly  ungrammatical."  In  Philadelphia,  he 
renewed  an  old  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Richard 
Peters,  the  official  reporter  of  the  decisions  of  the. 


42  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Supreme  Court,  and  was  received  into  the  family  of 
that  gentleman  on  most  cordial  and  intimate  terms. 
To  a  daughter  of  Mr.  Peters  this  generation  of  read 
ers  is  indebted  for  a  graphic  sketch  of  our  hero  as  he 
appeared  then.  "  When  he  came  to  Philadelphia  in 
1834,"  sne  says,  "he  had  finished  his  course  at  the 
Law  School,  I  think,  but  had  almost  put  his  eyes  out 
with  hard  study,  and  was  forced  to  come  away  for 
rest.  He  was  then  a  great,  tall,  lank  creature,  quite 
heedless  of  the  form  and  fashion  of  his  garb,  unso 
phisticated,  everybody  said,  and  oblivious  of  the  pro 
priety  of  wearing  a  hat  in  a  city,  going  about  in  a 
rather  shabby  fur  cap  ;  but  the  fastidiousness  of 
fashionable  ladies  was  utterly  routed  by  the  wonder 
ful  charm  of  his  conversation,  and  he  was  carried 
about  triumphantly,  and  introduced  to  all  the  dis 
tinguished  people,  young  and  old,  who  then  made 
Philadelphia  society  so  brilliant.  No  amount  of  honey 
ing,  however,  could  then  affect  him.  His  simplicity, 
his  perfect  naturalness,  was  what  struck  everyone, 
combined  with  his  rare  culture,  and  his  delicious 
youthful  enthusiasm." 

Here  is  an  instance  of  his  "  delicious  youthful  enthu 
siasm  "  for  an  object  other  than  knowledge.  The  pic 
ture  is  done  by  the  same  hand,  and  belongs  to  the 
time  of  that  first  visit  to  Philadelphia  :  "  He  was 
almost  beside  himself  then  over  Fanny  Kemble's  act 
ing  ;  used  to  walk,  he  said,  that  winter  to  and  from 
Boston,  through  snow  and  storm,  to  see  her  act.  One 
of  my  sisters  had  a  singular  ability  in  imitating  this 
gifted  woman's  acting  and  reading,  and  it  was  Charles 
Sumner's  delight  to  insist  on  this  rather  shy  lady's 
performing  for  him.  His  exclamation  was,  '  By 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  43 

George,  that's  fine  !  By  George,  that's  fine,  Miss  S.l 
give  it  to  us  again;  now,  Miss  S. !  The  *  Do  it' 
point, — the  *  Do  it '  point  (from  Sheridan  Knowles's 
'Hunchback').  And  striking  his  great  hands 
together  and  heaving  them  about  like  Dominie  Samp 
son,  and  striding  up  and  down  the  room,  he  would 
keep  repeating,  *  By  George,  that's  fine  !  ' ' 

At  Washington  the  young  jurist  obtained  his  soul's 
desire,  viz.,  an  opportunity  of  drinking  at  the  national 
fountain-head  of  jurisprudence  whence  were  flowing 
the  living  waters  of  the  law  of  a  new  country.  Over 
the  Supreme  Court  John  Marshall,  the  great  Chief 
Justice,  still  presided,  and  by  his  side  and  second  only 
to  him  in  the  judiciary  of  the  land,  sat  Sumner's  mas 
ter,  Joseph  Story,  one  of  the  most  learned  jurists  of 
the  age,  and  there  also  sat  McLean,  who  was  subse 
quently  to  prove  that,  unseduced  by  circumstances 
and  unawed  by  power,  he  was  in  independence  and 
courage,  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  brave  and  liberty- 
loving  judges  of  glorious  old  England.  At  its  bar 
was  gathered  annually  the  flower  of  the  forum  of  all 
the  States,  from  that  big-brained,  deep-throated  mas 
tiff  of  litigious  suitors,  Webster  himself,  through  the 
variedly  and  splendidly  gifted  and  equipped  forensic 
leaders  of  the  times,  who  with  the  erudite  and  illus 
trious  judges  who  sat  on  the  bench  made  the  Supreme 
Court  then  the  Mecca  of  the  American  student  of  the 
law. 

Sumner's  intimacy  with  Judge  Story  gave  him  al 
most  "a  place  in  the  Court,"  where  for  a  month  he 
pitched  his  tent  during  several  hours  of  each  day. 
The  judges  he  came  to  know  quite  well  within  and 
without  the  court.  In  1834,  they  all  put  up  at  the 


44  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

same  boarding-house  where  Sumner  was  a  nightly 
visitor.  Judge  Marshall  he  found  "  a  model  of  simplic 
ity  .  .  .  naturally  taciturn,  and  yet  ready  to  laugh, 
to  joke,  and  to  be  joked  with."  Within  the  bar  Sum 
ner  saw  a  degree  of  negligence  in  the  preparation  of 
their  cases  by  eminent  counsel  that  made  anything 
but  an  edifying  spectacle  for  either  gods,  or  law-stu 
dents.  To  Professor  Greenleaf  he  wrote  of  an  in 
stance  of  this  character,  in  which  figured  Francis 
Scott  Key,  author  of  "  The  Star-Spangled  Banner," 
Walter  Jones,  and  Daniel  Webster.  But  here  is 
Sumner's  relation  of  the  incident  on  the  spot:  "Key 
has  not  prepared  himself,  and  now  speaks  from  his 
preparation  on  the  trial  below,  relying  upon  a  quick 
ness  and  facility  of  language  rather  than  upon  re 
search.  Walter  Jones  —  a  man  of  acknowledged 
powers  in  the  law,  unsurpassed,  if  not  unequaled, 
by  any  lawyer  in  the  country — is  in  the  same  plight. 
He  is  now  conning  his  papers  and  maturing  his 
points  —  a  labor  which,  of  course,  he  should  have 
gone  through  before  he  entered  the  court-room. 
And  our  Webster  fills  up  the  remiss  triumvirate.  He, 
like  Jones,  is  doing  the  labor  in  court  which  should 
have  been  done  out  of  court.  In  fact,  politics  have 
entirely  swamped  his  whole  time  and  talents.  All 
here  declare  that  he  has  neglected  his  cases  this  term 
in  a  remarkable  manner.  It  is  now  whispered  in  the 
room  that  he  has  not  looked  at  the  present  case, 
though  the  amount  at  stake  is  estimated  at  half  a 
million  of  dollars."  Nor  was  this,  alas  !  the  only  ex 
ample  of  that  great  man's  capacity  for  neglecting  the 
interests  of  his  clients,  of  leaving  undone  the  things, 
which,  as  their  retained  attorney,  he  ought  to  have 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  45 

done,  witnessed  by  Sumner  during  his  stay  at  Wash 
ington.  " 

Politics  had,  indeed,  during  the  then  session  of 
Congress,  swamped  all  of  Webster's  time  and  talents. 
And  no  wonder.  For  politics  during  those  months, 
and,  in  fact,  ever  since  the  election  of  Jackson,  were 
of  an  altogether  unusual  and  engrossing  character. 
Perhaps  never  in  the  history  of  the  republic  has  party 
excitement  run  higher  than  it  did  at  this  period. 
The  removal  of  the  treasury  deposits  from  Mr. 
Nicholas  Biddle's  Bank  of  the  United  States  by  an 
executive  order  was,  at  the  date  of  Sumner's  visit  to 
the  Federal  capital,  the  occasion  of  most  extraordi 
nary  demonstrations  against  the  President.  Philippic 
followed  philippic  against  the  determined  old  man,  at 
whose  head  his  political  opponents  were  pleased  to 
shy  such  epithets  as  "tyrant,"  "usurper,"  and  other 
ridiculously  extravagant  appellations,  all  tending  to 
advertise  him  as  a  sort  of  American  Caesar  or  Bona 
parte,  bent  on  subverting  the  liberties  of  the  Union, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  arouse  against  him  such  a 
storm  of  popular  feeling  as  to  blow  him  and  his  party 
clean  out  of  the  government,  and  to  blow  the  afore 
said  political  opponents  and  their  parties  into  posses 
sion  of  it.  And  so  Sumner  found  those  Neptunes  of 
the  political  deep,  Webster,  Calhoun,  and  Clay,  busy 
beating  with  their  senatorial  tridents  the  yeasty  sea 
of  national  politics  into  waves  and  billows  for  the 
sake  of  whelming  the  beforementioned  "  usurper  and 
tyrant"  who,  by  the  way,  when  Sumner  saw  him, 
"appeared  very  infirm  ...  to  have  hardly  nerve 
enough  to  keep  his  bones  together."  Nevertheless, 
it  is  plain  enough  that  the  young  scholar's  sympathies 


46  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

were  wholly  against  "  the  old  tyrant,"  and  with  his 
enemies,  to  whose  attacks  in  the  Senate  he  listened 
eagerly,  and  from  one  of  whom  at  least  he  was  the 
recipient  of  marked  attention.  This  one  was  no 
other  than  Webster  himself,  who  introduced  his 
young  townsman  to  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  giving 
him  a  card,  which  enabled  him  at  all  times  to  gain 
access  to  the  floor.  Webster  little  dreamed  that  that 
young  townsman  of  his  was  in  the  space  of  eighteen 
years  to  succeed  him  on  that  floor,  and  impossible  it 
was  for  Sumner  to  foresee  the  imposing  part  which 
he  was  to  play  as  that  great  man's  successor  in  that 
body. 

During  these  visits  to  the  Senate,  Sumner  had  not 
only  the  good  fortune  to  hear  Webster,  but  Calhoun 
and  Clay  as  well,  the  second  of  whom  he  describes 
as  "  no  orator,  very  rugged  in  his  language,  unstudied 
in  style,  marching  directly  to  the  main  points  of  his 
subject  without  stopping  for  parley  or  introduction." 
Clay's  "eloquence  was  splendid  and  thrilling,"  he 
wrote  home.  "There  was  not  one  there  whose  blood 
did  not  flow  quickly,"  goes  on  our  Bostonian,  "and 
pulse  throb  quickly  as  he  listened.  .  .  .  His  language, 
without  being  choice,  is  strong  ;  but  it  is  his  manner. 
or  what  Demosthenes  called  action— action — ACTION— 
which  makes  him  so  powerful." 

Sumner  did  not  think  that  he  would  ever  revisit 
Washington.  "  I  have  little  or  no  desire,"  he  wrote 
his  father,  "  ever  to  come  again  in  any  capacity. 
Nothing  that  I  have  seen  of  politics  has  made  me 
look  upon  them  with  any  feeling  other  than  loathing. 
The  more  I  see  of  them,  the  more  I  love  law,  which, 
I  feel,  will  give  me  an  honorable  livelihood." 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  47 

It  was  on  the  way  between  Baltimore  and  Wash 
ington  that  he  had  his  first  glimpse  of  the  barbarism 
of  slavery — the  actual,  unadulterated  article — and  of 
its  mildew  effects  upon  the  people  and  section  where 
it  existed.  "The  whole  country,"  he  wrote  his 
parents,  "was  barren  and  cheerless;  houses  were 
sprinkled  very  thinly  on  the  road,  and  when  they 
did  appear  they  were  little  better  than  hovels — mere 
log-huts,  which  father  will  remember,  though  none 
else  of  the  family  may  be  able  to  conceive  them. 
For  the  first  time  I  saw  slaves,  and  my  worst  precon 
ception  of  their  appearance  and  ignorance  did  not 
fall  as  low  as  their  actual  stupidity.  They  appear  to 
be  nothing  more  than  moving  masses  of  flesh,  unen 
dowed  with  anything  of  intelligence  above  the  brutes. 
I  have  now  an  idea  of  the  blight  upon  that  part  of 
our  country  in  which  they  live."  That  idea  was  never 
to  be  erased  from  the  tablet  of  his  mind,  nor  was  that 
first  frightful  glance  down  into  the  depths  of  the 
slave  system  ever  to  be  forgotten  by  him. 

j't  will  not  fail  to  be  noted  by  the  reader  that  in 
this  first  impression  of  slavery  in  the  concrete  on  the 
part  of  Sumner,  it  was  its  political  rather  than  its 
moral  aspect  which  attracted  his  attention,  and 
excited  his  strong  repulsion.  In  other  words  it  was 
the  patriot  not  the  philanthropist  who  animadverted 
on  the  degradation  and  ruin  with  which  Southern 
slavery  had  doomed  the  Southern  half  of  the  Union. 
The  active  love  of  country  preceded  in  the  bosom  of 
the  young  scholar  the  active  love  of  man.  First 
the  blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear 
is  the  law  of  spiritual  as  well  as  of  vegetable  develop 
ment.  First  family,  then  country,  then  humanity 


48  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

are  the  upward  steps  in  the  ethical  progress  and 
unfolding  of  the  soul  of  man.  Sumner's  feet  were  in 
this  royal  road,  and  his  earnest  mind  was  turned 
truly  Zionward,  humanity-ward. 

In  September  of  1834,  the  young  attorney  was 
admitted  to  the  bar,  and  began  at  once  to  practice 
law,  appearing  in  his  first  case,  which  was  a  criminal 
action,  but  a  few  weeks  after  his  admission.  He  and 
George  S.  Hillard,  his  associate,  successfully  defended 
the  accused,  who  was  indicted  for  an  attempt  to  vio 
late  the  law  for  the  prevention  of  duelling  in  Massa 
chusetts. 

In  November,  he  and  Hillard  formed  a  partnership 
for  the  practice  of  the  law  and  opened  chambers  on 
Court  street  in  Boston.  There,  if  the  partners  did 
not  get  all  the  legal  business  which  they  could  attend 
to,  they  succeeded  fairly  well  in  that  line.  But  if 
troops  of  clients  did  not  find  their  way  to  those 
rooms,  troops  of  friends  did.  And  what  friends  they 
were  !  They  were  in  fact  no  small  part  of  Sumner's 
education.  Among  those  who  dropped  in  on  the 
young  lawyers  were  men  already  famous  in  law, 
letters,  and  politics,  or  who  were  destined  to  achieve 
fame  in  them  all.  There  were  Judge  Story,  and  Pro 
fessor  Greenleaf,  and  C.  C.  Felton,  the  future  pres 
ident  of  Harvard  University,  and  George  Bancroft, 
the  future  historian  of  the  United  States,  and  Horace 
Mann,  the  future  reformer  and  benefactor  of  his 
species,  and  Edward  Greely  Loring,  who,  too,  was 
some  day  to  be  talked  about,  though  not  exactly  in 
the  way  of  some  of  the  others,  of  Horace  Mann  for 
instance.  These  and  other  choice  spirits  not  named 
formed  a  goodly  company  of  earnest,  aspiring  minds, 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  49 

the  ere  me  de  la  ere  me,  so  to  speak,  of  the  culture  and 
character  of  the  old  town. 

Besides  this  larger  circle  of  friends,  there  was  later 
an  inner  and  limited  one  of  elect  companions.  They 
were  called  the  "Five  of  Clubs,"  and  consisted  of 
Henry  W.  Longfellow,  C/C.  Felton,  Henry  R.  Cleve 
land,  and  of  Hillard  and  Sumner,  who  was  the  young 
est  of  the  five  scholars,  who  together  made  excursions 
over  almost  the  whole  field  of  human  knowledge,  and 
sat  in  judgment  upon  each  other's  writings  as  well. 
The  goodly  fellowship  of  such  minds  was  in  itself  a 
liberal  education.  Such  contact  of  intellect  with  in 
tellect  keeps  all  the  faculties  alert  and  in  exercise, 
acts  as  a  steady  tonic  upon  them,  develops  a  muscu 
larity  and  robustness  of  the  moral  and  intellectual 
life,  that  no  other  one  agency  can  perform  quite  as 
well.  It  was  of  great  value  to  the  brilliant  young 
scholars  who  together  formed  the  "  Five  of  Clubs," 
but  to  Sumner,  with  his  omnivorous  appetite  for 
books,  and  his  enormous  powers  of  acquisitiveness, 
the  "Five  of  Clubs"  must  have  been  of  inestimable 
value,  by  strengthening  his  mental  powers  of  diges 
tion  and  assimilation  of  the  vast  amount  of  matter 
which  he  was  constantly  taking  into  the  stomach  of 
his  intellect,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to  use  the  expres 
sion.  It  gave  him  probably  a  mastery  over  the  im 
mense  stores  of  his  acquisitions,  which  he  could  not 
well  have  acquired,  or  at  least  so  effectively,  in  any 
other  way.  It  taught  him  to  know  himself,  to  gauge 
his  relative  strength,  to  measure  his  relative  height  in 
a  company  of  equals.  He,  with  the  great  work  which 
the  future  held  waiting  for  him  to  do,  needed  to 
know  himself,  to  trust  himself,  to  test  himself,  to 
4 


50  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

learn  to  lean  without  a  doubt  upon  himself  through 
good  report  and  evil.  And  what  better  preparation 
can  one  have  for  this  self-faith,  for  a  simple  virile  re 
liance  upon  the  might  of  one's  very  self  than  a  knowl 
edge  of  that  self,  such  a  knowledge  as  a  powerful 
mind  must  always  obtain,  when  thrown  into  frank 
critical,  earnest,  and  intimate  association  with  its 
equals? 

If  the  young  attorney's  clients  did  not  occupy  all 
of  his  time,  his  time  was,  nevertheless,  wholly  occupied 
to  the  last  inch  of  it  by  other  duties.  In  January, 

1835,  he  began  to  fill  Judge  Story's  place  at  the  Law 
School  during  his  attendance  upon  the  sessions  of  the 
Supreme  Court  at  Washington.     Sumner's  success  in 
his  new  role   of  instructor  in  law,  was,  according  to 
Professor  Greenleaf,  in  every  way  complete  and  grati 
fying.     Judge  Story  wrote  him  from  the  capital  :  "  I 
hope  that  this  is  but  the  beginning,  and  that  one  day 
you  may  fill  the  chair  which  he  [Prof.  Greenleaf]  or 
I  occupy,  if  he  or  I,  like  autocrats,  can   hope  to  ap 
point  our  successors."      A    little    later  in  the    same 
year,  Judge  Story  evinced  still  further  his   high  esti 
mate  of  his  pupil's  ability  and  learning  by  appointing 
him  the  reporter  of  his  Circuit  Court  opinions.     Three 
volumes  of  Judge  Story's  opinions  were  subsequently 
published  by  Sumner,  the  first  of  them  appeared  in 

1836,  the  second  in  1837,  and  the  third  in  1841.     The 
Judge  honored   Sumner  by   a  third   appointment  in 
1835,  viz., with  a  commissionership  of  the  Circuit  Court 
of  the  United  States,  an  office  which  was   to  be  re 
signed  by  the  appointee  many  years  afterward  when 
it  conflicted  with  his  duties  as  a  man.     But  we  are  an 
ticipating. 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  51 

Besides  labor  of  the  above  description  Surnner  did 
no  inconsiderable  amount  of  editorial  and  special 
magazine  work  on  the  American  Jurist,  of  which  he, 
and  Hillard,  and  Luther  S.  Gushing  became  editors  in 
April,  1836.  The  character  of  the  numerous  articles 
which  appeared  from  his  pen  in  the  Jurist  during  this 
period,  shows  quite  clearly  the  literary  bias  of  Sum- 
ner's  tastes,  "which  led  him  to  write  upon  authors, 
books,  and  libraries,"  remarks  Mr.  Edward  L.  Pierce 
in  his  "  Memoir  and  Letters  of  Charles  Sumner," 
"rather  than  upon  the  law  itself."  In  addition  to  his 
magazine  work  he  assisted  Professor  Greenleaf  in  the 
preparation  of  the  general  digest  of  his  "  Reports  of 
the  Decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Maine,"  and 
Mr.  Andrew  Dunlap  in  the  final  revision  of  his  "Ad 
miralty  Practice." 

There  is  one  thing  of  which  we  may  be  sure,  that  in 
all  of  Sumner's  editorial  and  magazine  work  money 
was  the  last  consideration  thought  of  by  him.  He 
looked  for  his  principal  remuneration  to  the  knowl 
edge  of  the  law  which  he  would  obtain  through  the 
doing  of  all  this  work.  When  he  read  law  for  an 
article  or  as  a  collaborator  of  legal  treatises,  etc.,  he 
perceived  that  such  readings  were  altogether  different 
matters  from  other  readings  which  had  no  purpose 
and  end  in  view  except  the  mere  getting  of  informa 
tion.  He  has  expressed  his  own  sentiment  on  this 
point  in  a  letter  to  a  young  lawyer  whom  he  had 
recommended  as  a  fit  person  for  editing  a  new  edi 
tion  of  the  "  Pickering  Reports  "  of  Massachusetts. 
To  Mr.  J.  C.  Perkins  he  wrote:  "Don't  regard  the 
money  as  the  pay.  It  is  the  knowledge  you  will  get — 
the  stimulus  under  which  your  mind  will  act  when 


52  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

you  teel  that  you  are  reading  law  for  a  purpose  and  an 
end  other  than  the  bare  getting  of  information — every 
spur  and  ambition  exciting  you;  depend  upon  it,  no 
engraver  will  trace  the  law  on  your  mind  in  such  deep 
characters.  ...  If  I  auger  right,  the  six  weeks  in 
which  I  think  you  will  accomplish  it,  will  be  the  most 
productive  of  your  whole  life.  In  them  you  will  feel 
more  palpably  your  progress  than  ever  before  in  the 
same  amount  of  time."  Actuated  by  such  a  scholarly 
passion  for  knowledge,  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion 
that  every  piece  of  work  to  which  Sumner  put  his 
hands  during  these  first  years  after  his  admission  to 
the  bar  should  react  upon  his  faculties  as  an  educator, 
should  constitute  a  part  of  the  great  preparation, 
which,  all  unconsciously,  he  was  making  for  future 
eminence  and  usefulness  to  mankind. 

Writing  to  the  same  gentleman  a  little  later  touching 
the  same  subject  matter,  Sumner  recurs  to  the  item  of 
the  mere  money  consideration  of  the  engagement  as 
compared  with  other  less  material  advantages  which 
would  thereby  inure  to  his  friend.  Says  Sumner:  "  I 
still  feel  that  the  money  will  be  the  least  advantage 
that  you  will  reap.  The  practice,  the  self-confi 
dence  (without  which,  if  properly  tempered  by  mod 
esty,  nothing  great  can  be  done),  the  habit  of  looking 
up  cases  and  of  looking  down  upon  the  opinions  of 
judges,  and  the  wide  and  various  learning  .  .  . 
will  be  worth  more  to  you  than  a  governmental 
office."  Sumner  by  no  means  despised  money  ;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  fully  recognized  its  utility  in  the  pur 
suit  of  knowledge.  As  an  instrument  it  was  greatly 
to  be  desired,  and  was  indeed  greatly  desired  by  him; 
but  money  as  an  end  he  did  not  want,  considered  it,  as 


PREPARATION    AND    PROGRESS.  53 

such,  not  worth  the  striving  for.  And  when  it  lowered 
a  student's  aims,  or  lessened  his  industry,  its  possession 
was  no  more  nor  less  than  the  possession  of  an  evil 
spirit,  which  required  exorcism  in  the  interest  of  the 
higher  life  of  scholarship.  To  his  friend  Francis  Lie- 
ber,  he  wrote:  "  You  are  one  of  the  few  men  whom  I 
wish  to  see  with  a  fortune,  because  I  believe  you  would 
use  it  as  one  who  has  God's  stamp  should.  It  will  be 
only  a  novum  organon  for  higher  exertion.  You  love 
labor  so  lovingly,  and  drive  it  with  such  effect,  that  I 
would  risk  you  with  Croesus's  treasury."  Not  all  the 
pleasures  and  splendors  which  the  devil  of  material 
wealth  spread  out  before  Sumner  was  able  to  tempt 
him,  the  young  scholar  of  twenty-four,  by  so  much  as 
a  single  thought  or  act  into  apostacy  from  the  simple 
and  grand  ideal  of  the  seeker  after  knowledge,  the 
lover  of  truth. 

A  strong  and  interesting  friendship  sprang  up  be 
tween  Sumner  and  Lieber,  a  man  of  encyclopedic 
range  of  mind,  and  of  an  extraordinary  capacity  for 
literary  labor,  and  for  turning  out  in  the  likeness  and 
form  of  a  new  book  whatever  came  to  his  mill. 
Sumner  was  a  man  after  his  own  heart,  who  could  be 
depended  upon  to  keep  the  hopper  of  the  great 
German  replenished  with  bulging  sacks  of  corn. 
Upon  the  young  scholar  Dr.  Lieber  made  constant 
requisitions  during  the  preparation  of  his  books,  and 
these  draughts  were  honored  in  turn  with  a  prompt 
ness  and  completeness  which  left  nothing  to  be 
desired  in  the  way  of  the  information  wanted. 
Sumner  never  tired  of  serving  his  friend,  now  it  was 
one  thing,  now  another — was  always  seeking,  in 
fact — to  advance  Dr.  Lieber's  fame  and  fortune.  Here 


54  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

is  the  \vay  the  savant  looked  upon  the  aid  and  comfort 
rendered  him  by  the  young  Boston  scholar.  "Let 
me  thank  you,  my  dear  friend,  most  heartily,"  he 
wrote  Sumner  in  1837,  "for  your  kind  addition  of 
stock  to  my  work  in  your  last.  The  interest  I  see 
you  take  in  my  book  cheers  me  much.  Contribute 
more  and  more.  It  will  all  be  thankfully  received  ; 
only  I  am  afraid  I  shall  be  embarrassed  how  to  use  it. 
I  cannot  all  the  time  say,  l  contributed  by  a  friend,' 
and  yet  I  do  not  want  to  plume  myself  with  your 
feathers  .  .  .  and,  my  dear  fellow,  if  it  were  not 
asking  too  much,  I  would  beg  you  to  grant  me  a 
pigeon-hole  in  your  mind  while  abroad  ;  say,  if  you 
would,  a  memorandum  book  with  this  title  :  *  All 
sorts  of  stuff  for  Lieber.' "  Sumner  was  amply  com 
pensated  for  such  services  in  his  contact  and  corre 
spondence  with  a  scholar  of  so  vast  a  range  of 
knowledge  and  of  such  productive  energies,  as  was 
Francis  Lieber.  But  even  more  highly  than  the 
good  which  he  derived  from  association  with  a 
first-rate  mind  must  be  estimated  the  reading  "for  a 
purpose  and  an  end  other  than  the  bare  getting  of  in 
formation,"  which  the  demands  of  Dr.  Lieber  must 
have  more  or  less  entailed  upon  him. 

To  this  early  period  must,  probably,  be  referred 
the  beginnings  of  Sumner's  interest  in  the  Peace 
question.  His  friendship  with  Dr.  Channing,  which 
dates  from  the  same  period,  had,  it  is  not  altogether 
unlikely,  some  influence  in  turning  his  attention  to 
that  subject.  At  any  rate,  we  know  that  in  April, 
1835,  interest  in  the  Peace  question  was  taking 
ro^  in  his  mind.  Writing  to  Dr.  Lieber,  touching 
several  of  the  doctor's  productions,  Sumner  speaks 


PREPARATION  AND  PROGRESS.  55 

particularly  of  "The  Stranger  in  America,"  adding  : 
"  I  think  the  Peace  Society  could  do  nothing  better 
than  reprint  your  chapter  on  Waterloo  as  a  tract, 
or,  at  least,  as  an  article  in  one  of  their  journals. 
It  gives  the  most  vivid  sketch  I  ever  read  of  the 
horrors  of  war,  because  it  embodies  them  in  the 
experience  of  one  individual,  without  resorting  to 
any  of  the  declamatory  generalities  which  are  gener 
ally  used  with  that  view/'  A  little  later,  in  the 
summer  of  the  same  year,  Sumner  recurs  to  the 
subject  to  express  his  determination  to  have  the  doc 
tor's  sketch  of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  published  as  a 
peace  tract  or  as  an  essay  in  some  journal  of  the 
Peace  Society,  and  his  intention  to  write  an  introduc 
tion  in  connection  with  it. 

During  this  same  period  Sumner  began  to  take  a 
lively  interest  in  another  reform.  It  was,  probably, 
directly  after  the  great  mob  in  1835,  by  which  Garri 
son  was  dragged  through  the  streets  of  Boston  and 
nearly  lost  his  life,  that  the  young  scholar  began  to 
read  the  Liberator.  The  excesses  of  the  friends  of 
slavery  disgusted  him,  excited  his  hot  indignation. 
Besides,  too,  the  slave  tyranny  had  struck  him  at  home 
in  the  person  of  his  father,  who  came  near  losing  his 
office,  the  reader  will  recall,  owing  to  a  pro-slavery 
outburst  against  him  in  the  city  for  alleged  negli 
gence  in  the  case  of  the  two  slave  women  referred  to 
in  the  first  chapter  of  this  book.  The  assault  upon 
Mr.  Sewall  by  a  slaveholder  for  the  part  taken  by 
him  in  the  rescue  of  the  fugitives  aroused  Sumner's 
ire  to  an  intense  degree,  as  is  evinced  by  a  postcript 
to  a  letter  of  his  from  Montreal  to  George  S.  Hillard 
in  the  autumn  of  1836.  "How  my  blood  boils," 


56  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

runs    the    postscript,    "  at    the    indignity    to    S.    E. 
Sewall  !  " 

To  his  friend,  Dr.  Lieber,  who  was  then  domiciled 
in  Columbia,  S.  C.,  Sumner  had  written  as  early  as 
January,  1836  :  "  You  are  in  the  midst  of  slavery, 
seated  among  its  whirling  eddies  blown  round  as  they 
are  by  the  blasts  of  Governor  McDuffie,  fiercer  than 
any  from  the  old  wind-bags  of  yEolus.  What  think 
you  of  it  ?  Should  it  longer  exist  ?  Is  not  emancipa 
tion  practicable  ?  We  are  becoming  Abolitionists  at 
the  North  fast  ;  the  riots,  the  attempts  to  abridge  the 
freedom  of  discussion,  Governor  McDuffie's  message, 
and  the  conduct  of  the  South  generally  have  caused 
many  to  think  favorably  of  immediate  emancipation 
who  never  before  inclined  to  it."  In  sooth,  Hercules 
is  beginning  to  scent  the  Lernaean  hydra  from  afar.' 


CHAPTER  III. 

HERCULES    IN    THE   NEMEAN    FOREST. 

ONE  December  evening  nearly  sixty  years  ago 
there  might  have  been  seen  in  New  York  a  young 
Bostonian  of  the  most  striking  appearance.  A  hero  he 
seemed  in  height,  though  hardly  a  hero  in  propor 
tions.  Thin  and  long  drawn  out  he  was — a  straight 
line  set  on  straight  lines,  and  endowed  with  marvel 
ous  length  of  limbs  and  prodigious  powers  of  loco 
motion.  The  appositeness  of  that  bit  of  Biblical 
humor  of  the  Lord's  taking  no  pleasure  in  the  legs 
of  a  man,  would  have  quickly  occurred  to  the  mind 
of  an  irreverent  wit.  For  certainly  the  ambulatory 
appendages  of  the  young  gentleman  were  deficient  in 
grace  and  comeliness.  Yet  laugh  would  neither  your 
irreverent  wit  nor  would  we.  For  there  was,  withal,  so 
much  of  eagerness,  energy,  enthusiasm,  expressed 
and  flung  off,  as  it  were,  by  the  flying  figure  that  both 
he  and  we  must  have  instantly  forgotten  the  subject 
of  its  proportions  in  the  higher  one  of  its  person 
ality. 

And  had  we  tracked  him  to  his  rooms,  our  curiosity 
would  have  been  further  piqued  by  these  additional 
points  :  an  ample  and  shapely  mouth,  gleaming  with 
large  white  teeth,  dark,  masterful  eyes,  a  nose  long 
and  regular,  a  brow  broad  and  lofty,  and  a  head  of 


58  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

uncommon  size  covered  with  masses  of  thick,  brown 
hair.  We  would  have  been  struck  in  the  tout  ensemble 
of  figure  and  face  by  that  sort  of  immature  strength 
and  splendor  which  distinguishes  a  growing  mastiff. 
And  well  we  might,  for  he,  the  original,  belonged  to 
that  superb  breed  of  human  watch-dogs,  who  appear 
at  intervals,  in  the  history  of  mankind,  to  stand  ward 
and  watch  over  their  rights.  It  was  Charles  Sumner 
at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  and  on  the  eve  of  his  first 
visit  to  Europe  in  1837. 

This  visit  to  Europe  was  in  Sumner's  life  no  ordi 
nary  event  but  was  meant  to  add  the  finishing  touches 
to  his  great  preparation.  When  rallied  as  young 
men  are  wont  to  be  on  the  subject  of  matrimony,  he 
used  to  reply.  "  I  am  married  to  Europa"  And  it 
was  so,  indeed,  for  until  he  had  satisfied  the  desire 
of  his  soul  by  going  abroad  for  study,  he  had  no 
superfluous  devotion  to  lay  at  the  feet  of  any  other 
passion  or  attraction.  Perhaps  a  few  extracts  from 
his  letters  will  serve  to  exhibit  the  ardor  and  strength 
of  his  desire  in  this  regard,  and  also  the  uses  to  which 
he  meant  to  convert  his  visit  abroad. 

Writing  to  a  friend,  acknowledging  the  receipt  of 
a  foreign  letter  sent  to  him  for  perusal  by  that  friend, 
Sumner  expresses  himself  in  this  wise:  "  I  am  always 
delighted — it  amounts  almost  to  a  monomania  in 
me — to  see  any  such  missive  from  abroad,  or  to  hear 
personal,  literary,  or  legal  news  about  the  distin 
guished  men  of  whom  I  read."  Two  years  later,  in 
the  summer  of  1837,  thus  to  Dr.  Lieber:  "  The  thought 
of  Europe  fills  me  with  the  most  tumultuous  emo 
tions  ;  there,  it  seems,  my  heart  is  garnered  up.  I 
feel,  when  I  commune  with  myself  about  it,  as  when 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  59 

dwelling  on  the  countenance  and  voice  of  a  lovely 
girl.  I  am  in  love  with  Europa"  And  a  few  months 
later  to  the  same:  "I  shall  remember  you  at  every 
step  of  my  journey,  and  in  your  dear  fatherland  shall 
especially  call  you  to  my  mind.  Oh,*  that  I  spoke 
your  tongue!  .  .  .  I  shall  write  you  in  German  from 
Germany.  There,  on  the  spot,  with  the  mighty 
genius  of  your  language  hovering  over  me,  I  will 
master  it.  To  that  my  nights  and  days  must  be 
devoted.  The  spirits  of  Goethe,  and  Richter,  and 
Luther,  will  cry  in  my  ears,  '  trumpet-tongued.'  I 
would  give  Golconda,  or  Potosi,  or  all  Mexico,  if  I 
had  them,  for  your  German  tongue."  And  later  still 
this  :  "  To-morrow  I  embark  for  Havre,  and  I  assure 
you  it  is  with  a  palpitating  heart  that  I  think  of  it. 
Hope  and  joyous  anticipations  send  a  thrill  through 
me;  but  a  deep  anxiety  and  sense  of  the  importance  of 
the  step  check  the  thrill  of  pleasure.  I  need  say 
nothing  to  you,  I  believe,  in  justification  of  my 
course,  as  you  enter  with  lively  feelings  into  my 
ambition  and  desires.  Believe  me,  that  I  know  my 
position  and  duties  ;  and  though  I  trust  Europe  may 
improve,  and  return  me  to  my  own  dear  country  with 
a  more  thorough  education  and  a  higher  standard  of 
ambition  and  life,  yet  it  cannot  destroy  any  simplicity 
of  character  which  I  possess,  or  divert  me  from  the 
duties  of  the  world."  To  Professor  Greenleaf  from 
the  Astor  House  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  he 
writes  :  "  It  is  no  slight  affair  to  break  away  from 
the  business  which  is  to  give  me  my  daily  bread,  and 
pass  across  the  sea  to  untried  countries,  usages,  and 
languages.  And  I  feel  now  pressing  with  a  moun 
tain's  weight  the  responsibility  of  my  step.  But  I  go 


60  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

abroad  with  the  purest  determination  to  devote 
myself  to  self-improvement  from  the  various  sources 
of  study,  observation,  and  society,  and  to  return  an 
American."  And  to  Hillard  the  next  day  :  "  We 
have  left  the  wharf,  and  with  a  steamer  by  our  side. 
A  smacking  breeze  has  sprung  up,  and  we  shall  part 
this  company  soon  ;  and  then  for  the  Atlantic  !  Fare 
well,  then,  my  friends,  my  pursuits,  my  home,  my 
country  !  Each  bellying  wave  on  its  rough  crest 
carries  me  away.  The  rocking  vessel  impedes  my 
pen.  And  now,  as  my  head  begins  slightly  to  reel, 
my  imagination  entertains  the  glorious  prospects 
before  me — the  time-honored  rites  and  edifices  of  the 
Old  World,  her  world-renowned  men,  her  institutions 
handed  down  from  distant  generations,  and  her  vari 
ous  languages  replete  with  learning  and  genius. 
These  may  I  enjoy  in  the  spirit  that  becomes  a  Chris 
tian  and  an  American." 

When  the  plan  of  this  visit  was  forming  in  his 
mind,  he  took  counsel  with  his  friends,  Judge  Story, 
Professor  Greenleaf,  and  President  Quincy,  who  were 
not  at  all  well  affected  to  it.  The  two  first  feared 
that  it  would  wean  him  from  his  profession,  the  latter 
that  Europe  would  spoil  him,  send  him  back  with  a 
mustache  and  a  walking-stick  !  Certainly  the  step 
was  an  extraordinary  one  for  a  young  lawyer  to  take, 
and  would  require  extraordinary  reasons  to  justify  it, 
of  all  of  which  Sumner  was,  as  the  time  for  his 
departure  drew  nigh,  gravely  and  even  painfully  con 
scious.  But  we  will  let  him  present  his  own  case  to 
the  reader,  its  pros  and  cons,  just  as  he  entered  them 
in  his  journal  on  Christmas  Day  while  still  at  sea. 
He  has  been  reviewing  his  last  day  on  shore,  how  he 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  6l 

dined  with  this  friend  and  called  on  another,  how  he 
busied  himself  with  parting  words  to  other  friends 
far  into  the  watches  of  that  last  night,  and  continues 
thus:  "And  a  sad  time  it  was,  full  of  anxious 
thoughts  and  doubts,  with  mingled  gleams  of  glori 
ous  anticipations.  I  thought  much  of  the  position 
which  I  abandoned  for  the  present ;  the  competent 
income  which  I  forsook  ;  the  foaming  tide,  whose 
bouyant  waters  were  bearing  me  so  well,  which  I 
refused  to  take  even  at  its  ebb — these  I  thought  of, 
and  then  the  advice  and  warnings  of  many  whose 
opinions  I  respect.  The  dear  friends  I  was  to 
leave  behind,  all  came  rushing  before  me,  and  affec 
tion  for  them  was  a  new  element  in  the  cup  of  my 
anxieties.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  dreams  of  my 
boyhood  came  before  me  ;  the  long-pondered  visions, 
first  suggested  by  my  early  studies,  and  receiving 
new  additions  with  every  step  of  my  progress ; 
my  desire,  which  has  long  been  above  all  other 
desires,  to  visit  Europe ;  and  my  long-cherished 
anticipations  of  the  most  intellectual  pleasure  and 
the  most  permanent  profit.  Europe  and  its  reverend 
history,  its  ancient  races,  its  governments  handed 
down  from  all  time,  its  sights  memorable  in  story  ; 
above  all,  its  present  existing  institutions,  laws,  and 
society,  and  its  men  of  note  and  mind,  followed  in  the 
train,  and  the  thought  of  all  these  reassured  my 
spirit.  In  going  abroad  at  my  present  age,  and  situ 
ated  as  I  am,  I  feel  that  I  take  a  bold,  almost  a  rash 
step.  One  should  not  easily  believe  that  he  can 
throw  off  his  clients  and  then  whistle  them  back,  'as 
a  huntsman  does  his  pack.'  But  I  go  for  purposes  of 
education,  and  to  gratify  longings  which  prey  upon 


62  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

my  mind  and  time.  Certainly,  I  never  could  be  con 
tent  to  mingle  in  the  business  of  my  profession,  with 
that  devotion  which  is  necessary  to  the  highest  suc 
cess,  until  I  had  visited  Europe.  The  course  which 
my  studies  have  taken  has  also  made  it  highly  desir 
able  that  I  should  have  the  advantage  derived  from 
a  knowledge  of  the  European  languages,  particularly 
French  and  German,  and  also  a  moderate  acquaint 
ance  with  the  laws  and  institutions  of  the  Old  World, 
more  at  least  than  I  can  easily  gain  at  home.  In  my 
pursuits  lately,  I  have  felt  the  want  of  this  knowledge, 
both  of  the  languages,  particularly  German,  and  of 
the  Continental  jurisprudence.  I  believe,  then,  that 
by  leaving  my  profession  now,  I  make  a  present  sacri 
fice  for  a  future  gain  ;  that  I  shall  return  with 
increased  abilities  for  doing  good,  and  acting  well  my 
part  in  life  " 

The  fears  of  Sumner's  friends  were  vain.  Ah  !  how 
little  did  they,  the  noblest  of  them,  comprehend  him 
or  his  future  ;  how  little,  in  truth,  did  he  comprehend 
himself  and  the  destiny  which  futurity  had  in  keep 
ing  for  him  ;  how  impossible  for  him  or  them  to 
forsee  that  this  visit  abroad  was  but  to  complete  his 
apprenticeship,  to  finish  the  great  preparation.  To 
revert  to  the  Greek  fable,  it  was  like  Hercules  going 
into  the  Nemean  Forest  to  cut  himself  a  club.  The 
Nemean  Forest,  into  which  Sumner  was  now  plunging, 
was  Europe  with  its  old  societies,  laws,  languages, 
literatures,  races  ;  and  the  club  with  which  he  was  to 
arm  himself  for  the  Herculean  labors  of  his  ripened 
faculties  was  enlarged  human  sympathies,  a  wider, 
deeper  knowledge  of  man. 

It  was  an  audacious  boast  of  Guizot  that  France  is 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  6 


the  centre,  the  focus  of  European  civilization,  the 
leader  of  European  progress.  "  There  is  not  a  single 
great  idea,  not  a  single  great  principle  of  civilization," 
says  this  celebrated  historian,  "  which,  in  order  to 
become  universally  spread,  has  not  first  passed 
through  France."  If  this  is  so,  and  as  a  general  prop 
osition  I  see  no  reason  to  question  its  soundness, 
then  Paris,  which  is  the  centre  and  focus  of  French 
life,  is  the  place  of  all  others  to  enter  upon  the  study 
of  European  life.  And  to  Paris  the  young  American 
scholar,  accordingly,  betook  him  at  once  for  the 
accomplishment  of  his  purpose. 

But  of  what  value  to  him  was  a  residence  in  the 
French  metropolis  without  the  use  of  the  French 
language.  It  was  the  clew  to  the  human  labyrinth 
into  which  he  had  plunged,  and  he  had  it  not.  To 
know  French  with  the  eye  was  one  thing,  to  know  it 
with  the  ear  and  the  tongue  quite  another  thing.  He 
found  himself,  in  respect  of  the  latter  knowledge,  as 
helpless  as  a  child  just  beginning  to  talk.  But  with 
characteristic  thoroughness  and  self-denial  he 
attacked  this  difficulty.  He  studied  French  by  day 
and  he  studied  it  by  night.  He  studied  it  first  under 
one  teacher,  and  then  under  two  teachers.  He 
studied  it  at  his  meals,  taking  good  care  so  to  sur 
round  himself,  that  he  had  need  to  make  constant 
attempts  to  get  his  tongue  acquainted  with  the  lan 
guage,  in  order  to  express  his  wants,  and  to  accustom 
his  ears  to  it,  in  order  to  place  himself  in  communi 
cation  with  the  minds  about  him.  Among  other  means 
used  by  him  to  this  end  were  the  theatres  which  he 
frequented.  Here,  with  copies  of  the  plays  before 
him,  he  followed  the  players  with  eye  and  ear,  learn- 


64  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ing  in  this  way  to  blend  form  with  sound,  to  listen 
with  the  sense  of  sight  and  to  see  with  the  sense  of 
hearing.  The  lectures  of  the  famous  schools  he  made 
to  serve  his  purpose  in  this  regard  also. 

Of  course,  he  blundered  like  any  beginner.  And  his 
errors  were  amusing  enough  at  times.  Here  is  a  case 
in  point.  He  has  called  on  Fcelix,  the  distinguished 
editor  of  the  Revue  Etr anger e,  and  a  French  admirer 
of  Judge  Story.  "  On  being  shown  into  the  room  of 
the  learned  pundit,"  writes  Sumner,  "  I  summoned 
all  my  French,  and  asked,  *  Est  ce  Monsieur  F&lix^que 
fai  Vhonneur  de  voir  ? '  to  which  he  replied  in  the 
affirmative.  I  then  said,  *  Je  m'appelle  Charles  Sumner' 
His  reply  convinced  me  that  I  had  pronounced  my 
French  so  badly  that  he  did  not  understand  me,  for 
he  inquired  if  I  had  seen  Mr.  Sumner  lately.  Then 
ensued  a  series  of  contretemps.  He  did  not  speak  a 
word  of  English  ;  and  my  French  was  no  more  fit  for 
use  than  a  rusty  gun-barrel,  or  than  the  law  of  a 
retired  barrister.  Then  came  to  our  assistance  his 
sister.  .  .  .  She  knew  English  so  as  to  speak  it  pretty 
well,  though  rather  painfully."  With  her,  as  inter 
preter,  he  made  himself  known  to  his  host,  whose 
ignorance  of  English,  and  Sumner's  of  French,  made 
intercourse  for  the  time  being  between  them  better 
*  honored  in  the  breach  than  in  the  observance.' 

A  week  later,  however,  he  dined  with  M.  Fcelix, 
when  being  appealed  to  with  regard  to  the  Constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States,  etc.,  the  young  American 
threw  himself  upon  his  little  knowledge  of  French  to 
learn  that  his  labor  was  not  in  vain.  "I  felt  con 
scious  of  continual  blunders,"  he  records  afterward 
in  his  journal;  "but  I  also  felt  that  I  was  under- 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  65 

stood,  so  that  I  was  making  language  serve  its 
principal  purpose,  namely,  to  convey  thought.  I 
often  spoke  little  better  than  gibberish,  but  still  I 
spoke  on.  This  was  a  triumph  to  me,  and  I  began 
to  feel,  for  the  first  time,  that  I  was  gradually  acquir 
ing  the  language."  French  was  an  indispensable 
instrument  in  the  prosecution  of  his  studies,  and  to 
its  acquisition  he  bent  his  first  two  months  in  Paris 
and  all  the  concentration  of  his  energies.  Never  was 
his  industry  greater,  and  never,  perhaps,  was  it  more 
fruitful. 

The  first  time  that  he  attended  a  lecture  at  the  Ecole 
de  Droit,  he  was  unable  to  understand  a  single  sentence. 
But  in  less  than  three  weeks  afterward,  so  successfully 
had  they  been  employed,  that  he  was  able  to  follow 
the  lecturer  through  the  largest  portion  of  his  lecture. 
In  six  weeks  he  was  able  to  converse  in  the  language, 
and  at  the  expiration  of  three  months  was  competent 
to  assume  the  role  of  interpreter  in  judicial  proceed 
ings  in  which  a  compatriot  figured. 

During  this  period,  while  struggling  with  the  French 
tongue,  he  was  making  daily  accretions  to  the  stores 
of  his  knowledge  in  the  famous  schools  of  Paris,  where 
he  listened  to  nearly  two  hundred  lecturers  not  alone 
on  his  favorite  subjects  of  jurisprudence,  history,  and 
belles  lettres,  but  also  on  science  and  philosophy. 
Paris  with  her  thousand  and  one  attractions  and 
opportunities  to  the  general  student,  lay  spread  out 
at  the  feet  of  the  young  scholar — her  ancient  build 
ings  and  landmarks;  her  picture-galleries,  and  monu 
ments;  her  public  hospitals  and  charities;  her  courts, 
churches,  and  theatres;  her  celebrated  men,  legisla 
tors,  litterateurs,  and  savants;  her  brilliant  society  and 
5 


66  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

salons — in  short,  all  her  large,  cosmopolitan  life  and 
human  point  of  view.  No  one  of  which  escaped  the 
eager,  indefatigable,  all-devouring  mind  of  Sumner. 

To  Hillard,  just  three  months  after  his  departure 
from  New  York,  he  wrote  :  "  I  shall  stay  in  Paris  till 
the  middle  of  April;  I  find  ten  times  as  much  here  to 
interest  me  as  I  anticipated.  The  lectures,  the  courts, 
the  arts, — each  would  cousumeayear— -to  say  nothing 
of  the  language  which  I  am  trying  after  very  hard." 
To  Dr.  Lieber  :  "  All  that  you  have  promised  for 
me  in  Europe  has  been  more  than  realized.  I  have 
seen  new  lives;  and  the  life  of  life  seems  to  have  burst 
upon  me.  Cicero  could  hardly  have  walked  with 
a  more  bounding  and  yet  placid  joy  through  the 
avenues  of  his  Elysium,  and  conversed  with  Scipio 
and  Laelius,  than  I,  a  distant  American,  of  a  country 
which  has  no  prescription,  no  history,  and  no  associa 
tion,  walk  daily  in  the  places  which  now  surround 
me." 

May  21,  he  wrote  Judge  Story  :  "  Still  in  Paris,  and 
still  longing  to  stay  here.  I  have  promised  many 
persons  that  I  will  return,  and  I  must  return.  I  find 
myself  on  a  track  which  no  American,  perhaps  no 
Englishman,  has  ever  followed.  I  wish  to  master  the 
judicial  institutions  of  this  great  country;  and  for  this 
purpose  to  talk  with  the  most  eminent  judges,  lawyers, 
and  professors,  and  to  get  their  views  upon  the  actual 
operation  of  things.  How  I  shall  use  the  materials  I 
may  collect  remains  to  be  seen,  whether  in  a  work 
presenting  a  comparative  view  of  the  judicial  institutions 
of  France,  England,  and  America,  particularly  with  a 
view  to  the  theory  of  proofs  and  the  initiation  of 
causes,  I  cannot  tell  ;  but  certainly  there  is  a  vast 


HERCULES   IN   THE   NEMEAN    FOREST.  67 

amount  of  valuable  information  which  I  may  harvest 
in  future  years.  In  collecting  this  information,  I  see 
before  me  the  clear  way  of  doing  good  and  gratifying 
a  just  desire  for  reputation." 

These  opportunities  and  experiences,  highly  prized 
ds  they  were  by  him  (Sumner),  could  not  blind  him  to 
the  merits  of  America.  "  I  have  never  felt  myself  so 
much  an  American,"  he  wrote  Judge  Story,  "  have 
never  loved  my  country  so  ardently,  as  since  I  left  it. 
I  live  in  the  midst  of  manners,  institutions,  and  a  form 
of  government  wholly  unlike  those  under  which  I  was 
born  ;  and  I  now  feel  in  stronger  relief  than  ever  the 
superior  character  impressed  upon  our  country  in  all 
the  essentials  of  happiness,  honor,  and  prosperity.  I 
would  not  exchange  my  country  for  all  that  I  can 
see  and  enjoy  here.  And  dull  must  his  soul  be,  un 
worthy  of  America,  who  would  barter  the  priceless 
intelligence  which  pervades  his  whole  country,  the 
universality  of  happiness,  the  absence  of  beggary,  the 
reasonable  equality  of  all  men  as  regards  each  other 
and  the  law,  and  the  general  vigor  which  fills  every 
member  of  society,  besides  the  high  moral  tone,  and 
take  the  state  of  things  which  I  find  here,  where 
wealth  flaunts  by  the  side  of  the  most  squalid  poverty, 
where  your  eyes  are  constantly  annoyed  by  the  most 
disgusting  want  and  wretchedness,  and  where  Amer 
ican  purity  is  inconceivable." 

But  if  months  in  the  French  metropolis  could  not 
blind  the  young  American  to  the  merits  of  his  country, 
neither  could  they  hide  from  him  her  one  great  sin. 
The  national  skeleton  haunted  Sumner  in  the  gay  and 
brilliant  centre  of  European  life.  Slavery  was  an  evil 
whose  astral  form  had  an  uncomfortable  way  of 


68  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

appearing  to  Americans  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
Wherever  they  traveled  in  the  Old  World,  there, 
sooner  or  later,  they  were  sure  to  encounter  the 
ghost  of  the  Republic's  murdered  Banquo.  The 
noise  of  the  fierce  struggle  in  Congress  over  the  right 
of  petition  reached  across  the  waters,  and  the  tyranny 
of  the  slave-power  aroused  his  indignation,  as  wit 
ness  this  word  to  Hillard:  "  Why  did  the  Northern 
members  of  Congress  bear  the  infamous  bullying  of 
the  South?  Dissolve  the  Union  I  say." 

Willy-nilly  he  was  forced  to  reflect  upon  the  subject 
of  slavery  at  home.  He  was  forced  to  listen  to  the 
reflections  of  others  on  the  same  subject  also.  He 
calls  on  Sismondi,  the  historian  of  the  "  Italian  Re 
publics,"  and  lo!  Sismondi  proceeds  to  speak  at  length 
and  with  ardor  on  that  theme.  Sismondi  is  a  thorough 
going  Abolitionist,  and  is  astonished  that  America 
does  not  profit  from  the  experience  of  other  nations 
"and  eradicate  slavery,  as  has  been  done  in  the  civil 
ized  parts  of  Europe." 

In  Paris,  Sumner  meets  a  South  Carolina  slave 
holder,  who  is  nevertheless  opposed  to  the  peculiar 
institution,  "  and  believes  it  can  be  and  ought  to  be 
abolished."  Besides  these  lessons  in  liberty  the  young 
scholar  received  his  first  practical  ones  in  human 
equality  and  fraternity.  It  was  while  attending  the 
lectures  of  De  Gerando  and  Rossi  in  the  Ecole  de 
Droit,  that  Sumner  noticed  among  the  audience  two 
or  three  colored  pupils  "  dressed  quite  &  la  mode,  and 
having  the  easy,  jaunty  air  of  young  men  of  fashion, 
who  were  well  received  by  their  fellow-students. 
They  were  standing  in  the  midst  of  a  knot  of  young 
men,  and  their  color  seemed  to  be  no  objection  to 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  69 

chem."  Whereupon  Sumner  makes  this  observation 
and  deduction  in  his  journal:  "  I  was  glad  to  see  this, 
though,  with  American  impressions,  it  seemed  very 
strange.  It  must  be,  then,  that  the  distance  between 
free  blacks  and  the  whites  among  us  is  derived  from 
education,  and  does  not  exist  in  the  nature  of 
things." 

After  a  residence  of  five  months,  Sumner  left  Paris 
and  passed  over  to  London.  In  anticipation  of  which 
he  wrote  Judge  Story  in  May:  "I  leave  Paris  with 
the  liveliest  regret,  and  feeling  very  much  as  when  I 
left  Boston,  with  a  thousand  things  undone,  un 
learned,  and  unstudied  which  I  wished  to  do,  to  learn, 
and  to  study.  I  start  for  England,  and  how  my  soul 
leaps  at  the  thought!  Land  of  my  studies,  my  thoughts, 
and  my  dreams  !  There,  indeed,  shall  I  *  pluck  the 
life  of  life.'  Much  have  I  enjoyed  and  learned  at 
Paris,  but  my  course  has  been  constantly  impeded 
by  the  necessity  of  unremitted  study.  The  language 
was  foreign,  as  were  the  manners,  institutions,  and 
laws.  I  have  been  a  learner  daily  ;  I  could  under 
stand  nothing  without  study.  But  in  England  every 
thing  will  be  otherwise.  The  page  of  English  history 
is  a  familiar  story,  the  English  law  has  been  my  de 
voted  pursuit  for  years,  English  politics  my  pastime, 
and  the  English  language  is  my  own.  I  shall  there  at 
once  leap  to  the  full  enjoyment  of  all  the  mighty  in 
terests  which  England  affords,  and  I  shall  be  able  to 
mingle  at  once  with  its  society,  catch  its  tone,  and 
join  in  its  conversation,  attend  the  courts,  and  follow 
all  their  proceedings  as  those  at  home.  Here,  then,  is 
a  pleasure  which  is  great  almost  beyond  comparison, 
— greater  to  my  mind  than  anything  else  on  earth, 


70  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

except  the  consciousness  of  doing  good  ;  greater  than 
wealth  and  all  the  enjoyments  which  it  brings." 

Delightful  as  was  England  in  anticipation,  England 
in  reality  far  exceeded  it.  It  was  impossible  for 
Sumner  to  have  foreseen  what  was  in  store  for  him. 
Never  before  had  an  American  been  so  cordially  re 
ceived,  been  the  recipient  of  attentions  so  universal 
and  distinguished  from  the  upper  classes  of  British 
society,  as  made  the  young  scholar's  sojourn  in  the 
United  Kingdom  one  round  of  opportunities  and  suc 
cesses.  Not  even  Everett,  Ticknor,  Adams,  Long 
fellow,  Motley,  and  Winthrop  in  the  maturity  of  their 
fame  were  so  lionized  as  was  their  young  and  un 
known  compatriot. 

He  averaged  at  least  five  invitations  a  day,  was  ad 
mitted  as  a  foreign  visitor  into  four  of  the  London 
clubs,  was  welcomed  with  open  arms  by  bench  and 
bar,  by  the  foremost  men  of  letters,  science,  and 
philosophy,  by  the  leading  clergymen  and  statesmen 
of  the  land.  So  extraordinary  was  the  demand  for 
his  company  at  dinners,  that  in  some  instances  it 
could  only  be  obtained  by  engagements  ten  days  in 
advance.  Indeed,  "his  popularity  in  society  became 
justly  so  great  and  so  general,"  some  one  has  re 
marked,  "that  his  friends  began  to  devise  what  circle 
there  was  to  show  him  which  he  had  not  yet  seen, 
what  great  house  that  he  had  not  yet  visited." 

It  was  even  so,  for  Sumner  was  an  honored  guest 
at  most  of  the  country-seats  of  England  and  Scot 
land.  He  was  welcomed  by  Whigs  and  Tories  with 
equal  cordiality  into  their  households.  He  traveled 
the  circuits,  as  the  companion  of  judges,  like  Denman, 
Vaughan,  Parke,  and  Alderson,  and  of  leaders  of  the 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  71 

bar,  like  Follet,  Talfourd,  Wilde,  and  Rolfe.  He  met 
on  familiar  footing  such  luminaries  of  the  world  of 
letters  as  were  Hallam,  Grote,  Macaulay,  and  Landor. 
Carlyle,  whom  he  visited  and  heard  lecture,  seemed 
to  him  "like  an  inspired  boy,"  so  galvanic  were  the 
thoughts  which  came  from  him  couched  in  a  style 
grotesque  and  intense  in  the  highest  degree.  On  re 
marking  to  Lord  Jeffrey  that  Carlyle  had  very  much 
changed  his  style  since  he  wrote  his  article  on  Burns, 
the  great  critic  replied,  "Not  at  all;  I  will  tell  you 
why  that  is  different  from  his  other  articles  :  I  altered 
it" 

With  Wordsworth,  whom  he  also  visited,  he  was 
quite  charmed,  so  simple,  graceful,  and  sincere  were 
his  manners  and  conversation.  "  I  felt  that  I  was  con 
versing  with  a  superior  being,"  Sumner  wrote  Hil- 
lard  ;  "yet  I  was  entirely  at  my  ease."  The  poet 
spoke  warmly  on  two  subjects — slavery  and  copy 
right.  Very  different  were  our  young  traveler's  im 
pressions  of  another  great  man  whom  he  also  visited, 
viz.,  Lord  Brougham.  "  I  am  almost  sorry  that  I 
have  seen  Lord  B.,"  he  wrote  Hillard,  "for  I  can  no 
longer  paint  him  to  my  mind's  eye  as  the  pure  and 
enlightened  orator  of  Christianity,  civilization,  and 
humanity.  I  see  him  now,  as  before,  with  powers 
such  as  belong  to  angels  :  why  could  I  not  have  found 
him  with  an  angel's  purity,  gentleness,  and  simplicity  ? 
I  must  always  admire  his  productions  as  models  of 
art  ;  but  I  fear  that  I  shall  distrust  his  sincerity,  and 
the  purity  of  his  motives."  Sumner's  failing  faith  in 
this  unlovely  and  extraordinary  man  was  not  checked 
by  the  discovery,  made  at  his  own  table,  that  he  was 
addicted  to  the  vulgar  vice  of  swearing  to  an  unparal- 


72  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

leled  extent.  "  I  have  dined  in  company  nearly 
every  day  since  I  have  been  in  England,"  Sumner  re 
marked  in  one  of  his  letters, "  and  I  do  not  remember 
to  have  met  a  person  who  swore  half  so  much  as  Lord 
Brougham — and  all  this  in  conversation  with  an 
aged  clergyman!  " 

Sidney  Smith's  conversation  Sumner  found  "in 
finitely  pleasant,  and  instructive,  too,"  while  that  of 
Macaulay  he  set  down  as  "  rapid,  brilliant,  and  power 
ful  ;  by  far  the  best  of  any  in  the  company,  though 
Mr.  Senior  was  there,  and  several  others  of  no  mean 
powers."  But  Jeffrey,  who  "  pleases  by  the  alternate 
exercise  of  every  talent,  at  one  moment  by  a  rapid  ar 
gument,  then  by  a  beautiful  illustration,  next  by  a 
phrase,  which  draws  a  whole  thought  into  its  power 
ful  focus,  while  a  constant  grace  of  language  and 
amenity  of  manners,  with  proper  contributions  from 
humor  and  wit,  heighten  these  charms,"  he  pits 
against  the  world  of  conversationalists. 

Sumner  notes  in  one  of  his  letters  a  somewhat  curi 
ous  and  questionable  custom  which  obtains  in  Eng 
land  in  connection  with  card-playing.  "  I  have  found 
it  universal  in  England,"  he  wrote  Hillard,  "to  play 
for  money  ;  sober  persons  make  the  sum  sixpence 
on  each  point  —  a  term  which  I  do  not  understand, 
though  I  have  gained  several  points,  I  have  been 
told.  I  played  one  evening  with  Lord  Fitzwilliam 
as  my  partner  ;  and  we  won  between  us  about  a 
pound,  which  was  duly  paid  and  received."  Another 
evening  he  plays  with  the  young  Scarborough  and  De 
Manley  and  a  clergyman,  when  he  is  again  successful, 
and  the  clergyman  pays  him  five  shillings  !  All  this 
was  very  distasteful  to  his  Puritan  prejudice  against 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST. 


73 


cards  at  their  best  estate.  But,  since  he  was  in  Rome, 
he  fell  into  accord,  socially  speaking,  with  what  was 
lawful  for  Romans  to  do,  asking  no  questions  for  con 
science  sake.  Quite  unlike  the  usage  in  this  coun 
try,  man  and  wife,  when  playing  cards  in  England, 
are  always  partners,  because,  as  Lord  Fitzwilliam 
observed  within  Sumner's  hearing,  "  they  would  gain 
nothing;  it  would  do  a  man  no  good  to  win  from  his 
wife."  And  Lord  Fitzwilliam,  the  young  Puritan 
tolerantly  remarked,  "  is  a  person  of  the  greatest  pur 
ity  of  character,  and  religious  feeling." 

The  young  scholar's  life  was  full  to  overflowing 
with  the  most  interesting  experiences.  Existence 
was  a  gold  goblet,  brimming  with  the  juices  of  a 
thousand  vineyards  and  delights.  Wherever  he 
turned,  his  eyes  fell  upon  wide,  illuminated  pages  of 
human  life,  and,  wherever  he  listened,  voices  of  a 
great  and  glorious  past  ravished  his  intellect.  His  joy 
was  supreme,  complete,  as  he  stood  before  those  ar 
chitectural  mountains  of  the  north  and  of  the  south 
of  England,  Durham  and  Salisbury  cathedrals.  "  My 
happiest  moments  in  this  island,"  he  wrote  Hillard 
from  Fairfield  Lodge,  near  York,  "  have  been  when  I 
saw  Salisbury  and  Durham  cathedrals.  Much  hap 
piness  have  I  enjoyed  in  the  various,  distinguished, 
and  interesting  society,  in  which  I  have  been  per 
mitted  to  mingle  ;  but  greater  than  all  this  was  that 
which  I  felt,  when  I  first  gazed  upon  the  glorious 
buildings  I  have  mentioned.  Then  it  was  that  I  was 
in  communion  with  no  single  mind  —  bright  and 
gifted  though  it  be  —  but  with  whole  generations. 
Those  voiceless  walls  seemed  to  speak  ;  and  the 
olden  time,  with  its  sceptred  pall,  passed  before  me. 


74  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Oh!  it  was  with  a  thrill  of  pleasure  that  I  looked  from 
the  spire  of  Salisbury,  and  wandered  among  the 
heavy  arches  of  Durham,  which  I  can  never  forget." 

He  spent  a  part  of  the  Christmas  holidays  of  1838 
at  Milton  Park  with  Lord  Fitzwilliam,  and  there  par 
ticipated  in  the  English  sport  of  fox-hunting  for  the 
first  time.  He  sent  to  Hillard  a  graphic  description 
of  one  of  these  performances,  and  of  his  own  hair 
breadth  escapes.  "  The  morning  after  my  arrival," 
he  writes,  "  I  mounted  at  half-past  nine  o'clock  a 
beautiful  hunter,  and  rode  with  Lord  Milton  about 
six  miles  to  the  place  of  meeting.  There  were  the 
hounds  and  huntsmen  and  whippers-in,  and  about 
eighty  horsemen, —  the  noblemen  and  gentry  and 
clergy  of  the  neighborhood,  all  beautifully  mounted, 
and  the  greater  part  in  red  coats,  leather  breeches, 
and  white  top  boots.  The  hounds  were  sent  into  the 
cover,  and  it  was  a  grand  sight  to  see  so  many  hand 
some  dogs,  all  of  a  size,  and  all  washed  before  com 
ing  out,  rushing  into  the  underwood  to  start  the 
fox.  We  were  unfortunate  in  not  getting  a  scent  im 
mediately,  and  rode  from  cover  to  cover  ;  but  soon 
the  cry  was  raised  'Tally-ho!' — The  dogs  barked— 
the  horsemen  rallied — the  hounds  scented  their  way 
through  the  cover  on  the  trail  of  the  fox,  and  then 
started  in  full  run.  I  had  originally  intended  only  to 
ride  to  cover  to  see  them  throw  off,  and  then  make 
my  way  home,  believing  myself  unequal  to  the  prob 
able  run  ;  but  the  chase  commenced,  and  I  was  in  the 
midst  of  it,  and  being  excellently  mounted  nearly  at 
the  head  of  it.  Never  did  I  see  such  a  scamper  ;  and 
never  did  it  enter  into  my  head  that  horses  could  be 
pushed  to  such  speed  in  such  places.  We  dashed 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  75 

through  and  over  bushes,  leaping  broad  ditches, 
splashing  in  brooks  and  mud,  and  passing  over  fences 
as  so  many  imaginary  lines.  My  first  fence  I  shall 
not  readily  forget.  I  was  near  Lord  Milton,  who  was 
mounted  on  a  thoroughbred  horse.  He  cleared  a 
fence  before  him.  My  horse  pawed  the  ground  and 
neighed.  I  gave  him  the  rein,  and  he  cleared  the 
fence  :  as  I  was  up  in  the  air  for  one  moment,  how 
was  I  startled  to  look  down  and  see  that  there  was 
not  only  a  fence  but  a  ditch  !  He  cleared  the  ditch 
too.  I  have  said  it  was  my  first  experiment.  I  lost 
my  balance,  was  thrown  to  the  very  ears  of  the  horse, 
but  in  some  way  or  other  contrived  to  work  myself 
back  to  the  saddle  without  touching  the  ground 
(vide  some  of  the  hunting  pictures  of  leaps,  etc.). 
How  I  got  back  I  cannot  tell,  but  I  did  regain  my 
seat,  and  my  horse  was  at  a  run  in  a  moment.  All  this, 
you  will  understand,  passed  in  less  time  by  far  than  it 
will  take  to  read  this  account.  One  moment  we  were 
in  a  scamper  through  a  ploughed  field,  another  over 
a  beautiful  pasture,  and  another  winding  through  the 
devious  paths  of  a  wood.  I  think  I  may  say  that  in 
no  single  day  of  my  life  did  I  ever  take  so  much  ex 
ercise.  I  have  said  that  I  mounted  at  nine  and  a  half 
o'clock.  It  wanted  twenty  minutes  of  five  when  I 
finally  dismounted,  not  having  been  out  of  the  saddle 
more  than  thirty  seconds  during  all  this  time,  and 
then  only  to  change  my  horse,  taking  a  fresh  one 
from  a  groom  who  was  in  attendance.  During  much 
of  the  time  we  were  on  a  full  run." 

Sumner's  experience,  anent  the  English  custom  of 
card-playing,  the  reader  will  recall,  ran  somewhat 
against  the  grain  of  his  New  England  conscience. 


76  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

The  English  sport  of  fox-hunting,  though  much  en 
joyed  at  the  time,  exerted,  upon  reflection,  a  sobering 
influence  upon  him  also.  "  I  was  excited  and  interested 
by  it,  I  confess,"  he  wrote  Hillard  ;  "  I  should  like  to 
enjoy  it  more,  and  have  pressing  invitations  to  con 
tinue  my  visit  or  renew  it  at  some  future  period.  But 
I  have  moralized  much  upon  it,  and  have  been  made 
melancholy  by  seeing  the  time  and  money  that  are 
lavished  on  this  sport,  and  observing  the  utter  un 
productiveness  of  the  lives  of  those  who  are  most 
earnestly  engaged  in  it — like  my  lord's  family,  whose 
mornings  are  devoted  to  it,  and  whose  evenings  are 
rounded  by  a  sleep."  Europe  could  not  spoil  him,  or 
silence  within  him  the  still,  small  voice  of  duty  and 
aspiration,  President  Quincy's  apprehensions  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding. 

England,  like  France,  failed  to  make  inroads  upon 
the  simplicity  of  his  character  and  manners,  upon  his 
loyalty  to  country  and  old  friends.  He  remained  at 
the  end  of  this  first  visit  to  England  as  he  was  in  the 
beginning  of  it — the  same  natural,  genial,  unaffected 
lover  of  learning  and  learned  men  and  women.  Not 
for  an  instant,  amid  all  the  seductions  of  the  most 
brilliant  society  of  the  Old  World,  was  his  ardent  affec 
tion  for  America  lessened.  Not  that  he  was  blind  to 
the  faults  of  America.  Indeed,  from  his  perch  across 
the  Atlantic  they  appeared  with  painful  distinctness 
to  him.  Her  politics  seemed  petty  and  provincial 
by  the  side  of  the  world-wide  questions  which 
occupied  the  thought  and  time  of  Europeans. 

He  frankly  owned  that  "  in  England,  what  is  called 
society  is  better  educated,  more  refined,  and  more 
civilized  than  what  is  called  society  in  our  country." 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  77 

Still  he  was  none  the  less  American  for  seeing  these 
points,  which  put  America  at  a  disadvantage  when 
compared  with  Europe.  The  true  pride  of  his  coun 
try  he  perceived,  as  he  had  not  before  this  visit  abroad 
perceived  it,  lay,  as  Charles  Duller  put  it, with  all  below 
the  "  silk-stocking  classes."  The  American  "silk- 
stocking  classes  "  were,  undeniably,  not  on  a  level 
with  the  "  silk-stocking  classes"  of  the  mother  country. 
But  that  it  was  quite  otherwise  with  the  middle  and 
poorer  classes,  Sumner  was  not  slow  to  discern. 
"  The  true  pride  of  America,"  he  wrote  in  one  of  his 
letters,  "  is  in  her  middle  and  poorer  classes — in  their 
general  health  and  happiness  and  freedom  from 
poverty  ;  in  their  facilities  for  being  educated,  and 
in  the  opportunities  open  to  them  of  rising  in  the 
scale." 

As  Sumner  was  to  come  into  collision  with 
these  "  silk-stocking  classes  "  of  America,  it  was  of 
no  small  moment  to  him  that  he  should  get  this 
comparative  view  of  them  at  this  time,  see  them  with 
the  unprejudiced  eye  of  an  intelligent  and  liberal- 
minded  outsider.  For  he  was  at  the  same  time  and 
unconsciously  emancipating  his  mind  from  the  spell 
which  such  classes  throw  over  individuals,  the  strong 
est  and  most  upright.  Destiny  had  thus  early  dis- 
charmed  for  the  young  scholar  this  power — forearmed 
him  against  its  enslaving  influence. 

He  was  during  this  visit  to  England  full  of  the 
most  kindly  offices  to  friends  and  compatriots.  Now 
these  friendly  offices  were  directed  to  calling  the  atten 
tion  of  English  men  of  letters  to  Prescott's  "  History 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,"  then  just  published,  and 
to  securing  for  it  an  appreciative  and  scholarly 


78  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

review  from  competent  hands.  Now  they  were  en 
listed  in  behalf  of  Judge  Story,  getting  at  his  in 
stance  copies  of  important  legal  manuscripts,  or 
looking  after  the  interests  of  the  judge's  fast  multi 
plying  works  upon  the  law.  Or  maybe  they  were 
addressed  toward  enhancing  the  sale  or  obtaining  a 
publisher  for  some  one  of  the  many  volumes  from  the 
prolific  pen  of  Dr.  Lieber.  In  fine,  they  and  others 
found  an  infinite  capacity  of  friendly  service  in  the 
young  scholar.  As  he  himself  expressed  it  in  a  letter, 
"  It  is  not  simply  the  seeing  sights  and  enjoying 
society  that  occupy  me  ;  but  I  happen  everywhere 
upon  people  who  wish  some  sort  of  thing,  some 
information  about  something  which  I  am  supposed 
to  know,  who  wish  introductions  in  America,  or  Eng 
land,  or  the  like  ;  and,  forsooth,  I  must  be  submissive 
and  respond  to  their  wishes.  I  assure  you  my  tour 
has  been  full  of  pleasure  and  instruction  ;  but  it  has 
not  been  less  full  of  work."  Some  men  seem  born  to 
serve  their  fellows,  and  Charles  Sumner  was  un 
doubtedly  of  this  class. 

He  performed  for  the  United  States  a  noteworthy 
service  at  this  period.  The  controversy  growing  out 
of  the  conflict  of  claims  in  relation  to  the  boundary 
line  between  the  possessions  of  Great  Britain  and 
those  of  the  American  Republic,  and  known  as  the 
"  Northeastern  boundary,"  or  "  Maine  disturbances," 
took  on,  while  Sumner  was  in  England,  a  rather 
bellicose  tone.  The  State  of  Maine,  a  part  of  whose 
territory  was  in  dispute,  was  particularly  belligerent, 
having  erected  and  garrisoned  a  series  of  forts  along 
her  frontier  line  to  defend  her  title.  Her  chief 
executive  was,  besides,  a  rash  and  hot-headed  coun- 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  79 

selor,  with  whose  intemperate  message  on  the  ques 
tion  Sumner  was  not  a  little  disgusted.  When  he 
read  "  the  undignified,  illiterate,  and  blustering 
document  "  of  this  American  official,  he  confessed  to 
Hillard,  "  I  felt  ashamed  of  my  country." 

But  if  Sumner  disapproved  of  the  Maine  method 
of  settling  a  grave  international  dispute,  he  by  no 
means  disapproved  of  the  claims  of  his  country  touch 
ing  the  Northeastern  boundary  line.  Indeed,  when 
in  Paris  the  second  time,  he  prepared,  at  the  request 
of  the  United  States  Minister  to  France,  General 
Lewis  Cass,  a  clear  and  elaborate  statement  of  the 
American  case,  which  was  published  in  Galignani's 
Messenger,  and.  produced  a  highly  favorable  impres 
sion  upon  the  thinking  people  of  America  and  in 
England.  Professor  Greenleaf  was  delighted  with  it, 
thought  that  the  document  entitled  the  author  to  "a 
secretaryship  of  legation."  Edward  Everett  was 
hardly  less  appreciative  of  the  public  service  rendered 
by  the  young  scholar,  while  Robert  Ingham,  English 
man  though  he  was,  viewed  the  argument  as  "con 
clusive  "  against  the  position  of  Great  Britain  in  the 
controversy. 

The  possibility  of  war  between  England  and  the 
United  States  excited  in  Sumner  the  most  painful 
emotions,  and  strengthened  undoubtedly  his  growing 
opposition  to  the  arbitrament  of  the  sword  in  the 
settlement  of  differences  between  nations.  Writing 
Lord  Morpeth  concerning  his  own  apprehensions  in 
this  regard,  and  of  his  reliance  upon  the  deep  love  to 
England  of  the  educated  classes  of  the  Union  to 
avert  an  actual  outbreak  between  the  two  countries, 
Sumner  said  :  "  Still  it  is  a  dreadful  thing  to  enter- 


8o  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tain  the  idea  of  the  possibility  of  such  a  war,  the  most 
fratricidal  ever  waged.  My  own  heart  is  so  bound 
up  in  England,  while  as  to  a  first  love  I  turn  to  my 
own  country,  that  I  cannot  forbear  writing  you  as  I 
do.  You  can  do  much  in  your  high  place,  and  with 
your  great  influence,  to  avert  such  a  calamity  ;  and  I 
shall  always  look  to  you  as  one  of  the  peace-preserv 
ers.  For  myself  I  hold  all  wars  as  unjust  and  un- 
Christian  ;  I  should  consider  either  country  as  com 
mitting  a  great  crime  that  entered  into  war  for  the 
sordid  purpose  of  securing  a  few  more  acres  of  land." 
The  human  question  was  plainly  transcending  in  the 
mind  of  Sumner  all  narrower  questions  of  race  and 
country,  thanks  to  the  human  love  which  welcomed 
him  everywhere  in  England  as  a  brother. 

After  a  sojourn  of  nine  months  in  England,  Sumner 
recrossed  the  channel  to  France  and  passed  four  in 
teresting  weeks  in  Paris,  where  he  found  Lord 
Brougham  and  other  friends,  French,  English,  and 
American,  with  whom  he  renewed  old  acquaintances. 
Paris  was  as  gay  and  fascinating  as  ever.  He  rejoiced 
afresh  in  the  beautiful  city,  not  alone  for  its'  splendid 
sights  and  scenes,  but  for  its  people's  palaces,  for  "  its 
museums,  stored  in  the  halls  of  kings,  which  are 
gazed  on  by  the  humble,  the  lowly,  and  the  poor." 
"  I  again  entered  the  Louvre  with  a  throb,"  he  wrote 
Hillard,  "and  rejoiced  as  I  ascended  its  magnificent 
stairway,  to  think  that  it  was  no  fee-possession,  set 
apart  to  please  the  eyes  of  royalty."  Nowhere,  in 
sooth,  whether  in  England  or  France,  was  the  young 
American  unmindful  of  the  situation  or  of  the  rights 
of  the  people.  Their  wretchedness  depressed,  their 
advancement  elevated  his  spirits. 


HERCULES    :N    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  8l 

In  the  month  of  May  he  set  sail  from  Marseilles  for 
sunny  Italy,  land  of  his  studies  and  of  his  dreams.  The 
happiness  of  our  tourist  may  be  said  to  have  touched  its 
high-water  mark  under  skies  which  had  once  smiled 
on  Virgil  and  Horace,  on  Cicero,  Caesar,  and  Tacitus. 
Here,  amid  historic  sites  and  ruins,  he  revived  the 
glory  of  Augustus,  the  arms  and  the  letters  of  Rome. 
From  Naples  he  wrote  :  "  How  can  I  describe  to  you, 
my  dear  Hillard,  the  richness  of  pleasure  that  I  have 
enjoyed  !  Here  is  that  beautiful  bay  with  its  waters 
reflecting  the  blue  heavens,  and  its  delicious  shores 
studded  with  historical  associations.  What  day's 
enjoyment  has  been  the  greatest  I  cannot  tell, — 
whether  when  I  walked  amidst  the  streets  of  Pompeii, 
and  trod  the  beautiful  mosaics  of  its  houses ;  or 
when  I  visited  Baiae  and  Misenum,  and  looked  off 
upon  Capri  and  Procida  ;  or  when  I  mounted  the 
rough  lava  sides  of  Vesuvius,  and  saw  the  furnace- 
like  fires  which  glowed  in  its  yawning  cracks  and 
seams.  ...  I  think  I  do  not  say  too  much  when 
I  let  you  know  that,  with  all  my  ardent  expectations, 
I  never  adequately  conceived  the  thrilling  influences 
shed  by  these  ancient  classical  sites  and  things.  You 
walk  the  well-adjusted  pavement  of  Pompeii,  and  dis 
tinctly  discern  the  traces  of  wheels  worn  into  its  hard 
stone;  and  in  the  houses  you  see  mosaics  and  frescoes 
and  choice  marbles  that  make  you  start.  But  reach 
the  Forum,  and  there  you  are  in  the  midst  of  columns 
and  arches  and  temples  that  would  seem  wonderful 
to  us  if  found  in  a  grand  city,  but  are  doubly  so  when 
disentombed  in  a  humble  town.  What  must  Rome 
have  been,  whose  porches  and  columns  and  arches 
excited  the  wonder  of  the  ancient  world,  if  this  little 
5 


82  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

place,  of  whose  disastrous  fate  only  we  have  heard 
an  account,  contained  such  treasures  !  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  a  single  town  of  the  size  of  the  ancient  Pom 
peii  in  modern  Europe  where  you  will  find  so  much 
public  or  private  magnificence,  where  you  will  enter 
so  many  private  dwellings  enriched  by  the  chisel  and 
the  pencil,  or  stand  in  a  public  square  like  her 
Forum.  .  .  .  Capo  Miseno  is  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  bay.  One  day's  excursion  carried  me  over  the 
scene  of  the  Cumaean  Sibyl  (I  would  fain  have  sent 
you  home  a  mistletoe  from  the  thick  wood),  round 
the  ancient  lake  Avernus,  even  down  the  dark  cave 
which  once  opened  to  the  regions  of  night  ;  by  the 
Lucrine  bank,  whence  came  the  oysters  on  which 
Horace  and  Juvenal  fed  ;  over  the  remains  of  Baiae 
where  are  still  to  be  seen  those  substructions  and 
piles,  by  which,  as  our  old  poets  said,  their  rich  own 
ers  sought  to  abridge  the  rightful  domain  of  the  sea  ; 
and  on  the  top  of  Capo  Miseno,  in  the  shade  of  the 
vine,  with  fresh  breezes  coming  from  Hesperus  and 
the  West ;  and  in  the  ancient  gardens  of  Lucullus  I 
sat  down  to  such  a  breakfast  as  the  poor  peasants  of 
this  fertile  land  could  supply." 

But  amid  such  enchanting  scenery  and  associations 
the  pure  joy  of  the  young  scholar  is  marred  by  the 
presence  of  human  wretchedness.  The  Neapolitan 
beggar  is  ubiquitous  and  irrepressible.  "  Beggary  is 
here  incarnate,"  he  exclaims.  "  You  cannot  leave  the 
house  without  being  surrounded  by  half  a  dozen 
squalid  wretches  .  .  .  they  travel  with  you,  and 
go  into  the  country  with  you — wherever  you  make  a 
sortie  irom  the  town — as  if  joined  to  your  person  ;  and 
on  the  quays  they  stretch  themselves  at  full  length, 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAX    FoRLST  83 

while  a  hot  sun  is  letting  fall  its  perpendicular 
rays." 

Perhaps  these  lazzaroni  had  for  Sumner  their  lesson 
no  less  than  the  vestiges  of  an  imposing  past.  Were 
they  not  equally  with  broken  columns  and  buried 
cities  witnessesto  the  fall  of  the  mistress  of  the  world  ? 
How  had  Rome  risen,  how  fallen  ?  What  was  the 
unguessed  riddle  of  conduct,  which  turned  loose  upon 
her  mighty  power  and  her  mighty  children  the  all- 
devouring  Sphinx  of  the  moral  law?  Did  not  these 
beggarly  Neapolitans  show  that  the  soul  that  sinneth, 
whether  social  or  individual,  surely  dies  ?  Ah  !  sin 
was  the  destroyer,  sin  brought  the  men  and  their 
monuments  together  into  the  dust.  And  these  repul 
sive  creatures,  what  were  they  but  the  gibbering 
ghosts  of  a  once  tremendous  race,  wandering  wretched 
amid  scenes  of  past  greatness  and  glory,  for  the  Uving 
a  dreadful  monition  to  the  strength  of  human  folly 
and  iniquity?  Yes,  to  the  young  American,  they, 
too,  held  a  lesson,  a  lesson  of  the  gravest  moment  to 
his  far-away  country,  where,  meanwhile,  was  fiercely 
enacting  the  supreme  tragedy  of  freedom,  of  national 
folly  and  iniquity. 

But  the  scholar  proves  too  strong  for  the  moralist 
amid  the  eloquent  remains  of  the  Eternal  City.  Voices 
are  ringing  in  his  ears,  but  they  are  voices  of  sages 
and  statesmen,  poets,  orators,  and  historians.  To  his 
scholar's  soul  the  present  has  become  the  past,  the 
past  the  present.  Rome  reigns  again  on  her  seven 
hills,  Horace  sings,  Cicero  fulmines,  Augustus  mounts 
the  steps  to  the  Capitol.  The  dreams  of  his  boyhood 
and  manhood  have  at  last  come  to  pass. 

He  is  in  a  state  of  constant  delight.     For  he  has 


84  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

"  passed  through  dirty  Capua  (shorn  of  all  its  soft 
temptations)  ;  with  difficulty  found  a  breakfast  of 
chocolate  and  bread  where  Hannibal's  victorious 
troops  wasted  with  luxury  and  excess  ;  enjoyed  the 
perfume  of  the  orange  and  lemon  trees  that  line  the 
way  in  the  territories  of  Naples;  at  midnight  awoke 
the  last  gendarme  of  his  Neapolitan  Majesty,  who 
swung  open  the  heavy  gates  through  which  we 
entered  the  territories  of  the  Supreme  Pontiff ;  rode 
all  night;  crossed  for  twenty-eight  miles  the  Pontine 
marshes  ;  and  at  length,  from  the  heights  of  Alba, 
near  the  tomb  of  the  Curiatii,  descried  the  dome  of 
St.  Peter's  and  Rome!" 

He  opens  and  reads  a  letter  from  home  "on  the 
Capitoline  Hill,  with  those  steps  in  view  over  which 
the  friars  walked  while  Gibbon  contemplated;  the 
wonderful  equestrian  statue  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
before  me  ;  while  thickening  about  in  every  direc 
tion  were  the  associations  of  Old  Rome."  Ah  what 
joys  opened  to  him  in  Rome!  "Art  in  these  noble 
galleries,  and  antiquity  in  these  noble  ruins,"  he 
wrote,  "afford  constant  interest.  To  these  and  to 
Italian  literature  I  have  given  myself  here.  Painting 
I  have  studied  in  the  works  of  the  masters  before  me, 
and  in  the  various  books  in  which  their  lives  and 
merits  are  commemorated;  and  I  have  not  contented 
myself  by  simply  seeing  and  looking  upon  the  ancient 
remains  that  have  been  preserved  to  us."  No,  he 
reads  Horace  in  the  very  Tibertine  grove,  celebrated 
by  the  exquisite  genius  of  the  poet,  and  feels  on  the 
spot  the  felicity  of  the  verses. 

For  four  July  days  Sumner  and  George  W.  Green, 
the  then  scholarly  American  Consul  at  Rome,  were 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  85 

the  guests  of  Franciscan  friars  at  the  Convent  of 
Palazzuola,  "on  the  ancient  site  of  Alba  Longa — 
of  which  scarcely  the  least  trace  is  now  to  be  found," 
the  former  wrote  descriptively  to  Hillard — "and 
overlooks  the  beautiful  Alban  Lake.  No  carriage 
can  approach  within  two  miles  on  either  side,  and  it 
is  surrounded  by  precipices  and  almost  impenetrable 
forests.  I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  seen  a  more 
lovely  and  romantic  situation.  Here  we  read  the 
poets,  chat  with  the  fathers,  ramble  in  the  woods,  and 
bathe  in  the  clear  waters.  The  scene  is  so  like  a  pic 
ture,  that  I  sometimes  look  to  see  Diana  in  full  chase 
with  her  nymphs  about  her." 

To  Longfellow  he  wrote,  touching  the  sort  of 
reception  which  awaited  Felton,  who  was  then 
expecting  to  visit  Europe  soon  :  "  The  cellar  should 
send  up  its  richest  treasures — cellar,  did  I  say?  The 
grottos  shall  afford  their  most  icy  wines  ;  and  with 
him  we  will  try  to  find,  amidst  these  thick  woods  and 
precipitous  descents,  some  remains  of  that  noble  city 
which  was  so  long  a  match  for  Rome.  In  our  garden 
we  will  show  him  a  tomb  with  the  fasces  still  boldly 
visible,  where  reposes  the  dust  of  a  consul  of  the 
Republic  !  "  While  to  Professor  Greenleaf  he  wrote 
from  his  monastic  retreat:  "  In  the  background  is  the 
high  mountain  which  was  once  dedicated  to  Latial 
Jove,  to  whom  Cicero  makes  his  eloquent  appeal  in 
the  oration  for  Milo  ;  and  on  one  side  clearly  dis 
cernible  from  my  windows,  is  Tusculum,  the  favorite 
residence  of  the  great  Roman  orator." 

That,  indeed,  was  a  change  for  Sumner,  from 
England  to  Italy.  In  the  one  country  he  existed 
mainly  in  the  present,  touching  wherever  he  turned 


86  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  living  thought  of  living  minds  in  a  living  society 
and  civilization.  From  every  direction  life  pressed 
around  him,  strong  and  restless  as  the  sea  which  girts 
the  island  home  of  the  English  people.  There  he 
spoke  a  living  language,  studied  living  laws  and 
institutions,  scanned  the  pages  of  a  living  literature, 
pondered  living  problems  in  conduct.  But  in  Italy, 
he  dwelt  mainly  in  the  past,  touched  elbows  with  the 
dead,  lived  and  moved  in  the  fair  and  stately  world 
of  books. 

His  industry  was  astonishing,  his  achievement  pro 
digious.  He  mastered  the  Italian  language,  and  ex 
plored  the  enchanted  land  of  Italian  literature  from 
Dante  to  Alfieri.  His  days  are  devoted  to  these  literary 
excursions.  They  begin  about  half  past  six  o'clock  in 
the  morning  and  continue,  with  but  a  slight  intermis 
sion  for  breakfast  at  ten,  until  between  rive  and  six  in 
the  afternoon,  when  he  dresses  for  dinner,  which  con 
sists  usually  of  fruits,  salads,  and  wine,  spread  under  a 
mulberry  tree  in  a  garden.  By  this  time  his  friend 
Green  calls  for  him,  and  together  they  sally  forth  on 
a  quest  of  discovery  within  or  without  the  walls  of 
Rome.  Many  an  hour  the  friends,  seated  "upon  a 
broken  column,  or  a  rich  capital  in  the  Via  Sacra,  or 
the  colosseum,"  have  "  called  to  mind  what  has  passed 
before  them,  weaving  out  the  web  of  the  story  they 
might  tell."  Then  Sumner  returns  to  his  readings — 
and  what  readings  they  are,  to  be  sure  —  of  Dante, 
Tasso,  and  Ariosto  ;  of  Petrach,  Bocaccio,  and  Machi- 
avelli;  of  Alfieri,  Guicciardini,  Niccolini,  Romagnosi, 
Manzoni — in  fine,  these  readings  extend  through  a 
long  list  of  those  works  of  genius,  which  comprise  the 
literature  of  modern  Italy.  Indeed,  he  has  studied 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  87 

to  such  purpose,  that,  after  a  residence  of  four  months 
in  Italy,  he  is  able  to  write  a  friend  that  "  there  is  no 
Italian  which  I  cannot  understand  without  a  diction 
ary  ;  there  is  hardly  a  classic  in  the  language  of 
which  I  have  not  read  the  whole,  or  considerable 
portions.  I  understand  everything  that  is  said  in  a 
coach;  can  talk  on  any  subject"  with  such  facility, 
notwithstanding  mistakes,  that  even  in  French-speak 
ing  Milan  all  the  valets  and  waiters  address  him  as  if 
to  the  manner  born  ! 

During  Sumner's  residence  in  Italy  he  met  and 
greatly  admired  three  American  sculptors,  then  doing 
capital  work  there,  viz.,  Greenough,  Powers,  and 
Crawford,  between  the  latter  of  whom  and  the  young 
scholar  there  sprang  up  a  lifelong  friendship.  Craw 
ford  was,  at  the  time  of  Sumner's  visit,  pursuing  his 
art  in  poverty  and  obscurity.  He  was  sorely  in  need 
of  just  such  an  appreciative  friend  as  Sumner  speedily 
proved  himself  to  be.  Indeed,  it  was  mainly  due  to 
his  ardent  representations  to  friends  at  home,  that  the 
genius  of  Crawford  was  brought  to  the  notice  of 
America  and  the  world,  almost  immediately  after 
this  visit  to  Rome.  In  his  behalf  Sumner  promptly 
enlisted  the  interest  of  his  fellow-members  of  the 
"  Five  of  Clubs,"  together  with  that  of  Everett,  Pres- 
cott,  and  Ticknor. 

To  Hillard  he  wrote:  "Crawford  is  now  model 
ing  an  *  Orpheus  Descending  Into  Hell.'1  The  figure 
is  as  large  as  life.  He  has  just  charmed  with  his 
lyre  the  three-headed  dog,  and  with  an  elastic  step  is 
starting  on  the  facile  descent:  Cerberus  is  nodding 


1  Now  in  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  at  Boston. 


88  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

at  his  feet.  The  idea  is  capital  for  sculpture,  and 
thus  far  our  countryman  has  managed  it  worthily. 
It  is  without  exception  the  finest  study  I  have  seen  in 
Rome,  and,  if  completed  in  corresponding  style  — 
and  I  do  not  doubt  that  he  will  do  this — will  be  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  productions  that  has  come  from 
an  artist  of  his  years  in  modern  times.  Crawford  is 
poor,  and  is  obliged  to  live  sparingly,  in  order  to  con 
tinue  his  studies.  If  his  soul  were  not  in  them,  I  think 
he  would  have  abandoned  them  long  ago.  Strange 
to  say,  his  best  orders  come  from  foreigners — Eng 
lish  and  Russians.  Let  him  once  have  a  good  order 
from  some  gentleman  of  established  character,  and  let 
the  work  be  exhibited  in  America,  and  his  way  will 
be  clear.  Orders  will  then  come  upon  him  as  fast  as 
he  can  attend  to  them.  ...  It  was  the  case  with 
Greenough.  Cooper  saw  him,  was  pleased  with  him, 
and  gave  him  an  order  for  his  bust;  this  he  executed 
finely.  Cooper  then  ordered  a  group,  which  was  the 
1  Chanting  Cherubs,'  and  gave  Greenough  the  priv 
ilege  of  exhibiting  it  in  the  principal  cities.  From 
that  moment  his  success  was  complete.  Before,  he 
had  been  living  as  he  could;  not  long  after,  he  was 
able  to  keep  his  carriage.  ...  In  the  matter  of 
this  letter  I  feel  a  sincere  interest,  because  the  artist 
is  young,  amiable,  and  poor;  and,  benefiting  him, 
you  will  be  sowing  the  seed,  which  will  ripen  to  the 
honor  of  our  country." 

This  amor patriae  of  the  young  scholar,  whom  Presi 
dent  Quincy  was  afraid  that  Europe  would  spoil, 
crops  out  with  no  little  prominence,  when  he  com 
pares  Greenough  with  his  European  contemporaries. 
From  Florence  he  writes  Green  at  Rome  :  "  Green- 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  89 

ough  I  like  infinitely.  He  is  a  person  of  remarkable 
character  every  way  —  with  scholarship  such  as  few 
of  our  countrymen  have;  with  a  practical  knowledge 
of  his  art,  and  the  poetry  of  it;  with  an  elevated  tone 
of  mind  that  shows  itself  in  his  views  of  art,  and  in 
all  his  conversation.  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  he 
is  a  superior  person  to  any  of  the  great  artists  now 
on  the  stage.  I  have  seen  something,  you  know,  of 
Chantrey  in  England,  David  in  France,  and  those 
English  fellows  at  Rome.  As  men — as  specimens  of 
the  human  race  to  be  looked  up  to  and  imitated — 
they  are  not  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath 
with  our  countryman.  Three  cheers  for  the  stripes 
and  stars  !  " 

Of  the  future  author  of  the  "  Greek  Slave  "  Sumner 
writes  :  "  I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  Powers.  He  is 
very  pleasant  and  agreeable.  His  busts  are  truly 
remarkable,  close  likenesses,  without  coarseness  and 
vulgarity.  ...  I  asked  Greenough  if  he  thought 
Powers  could  make  a  young  Augustus.  '  If  he  had  a 
young  Augustus  to  sit  to  him,'  was  the  reply." 

Sheriff  Sumner  passed  away  while  his  son  was 
abroad.  The  mournful  tidings  reached  Charles  in 
Italy,  and  cast  a  gloom  over  his  otherwise  delightful 
visit.  There  was  no  reason  why  this  event  should 
hasten  his  return  home,  and  his  family  so  advised 
him.  The  sheriff  had  left  his  widow  and  children 
in  easy  circumstances,  with  little  to  do,  besides  the 
purely  formal  proceedings  connected  with  the  ad 
ministration  of  his  estate.  Nevertheless,  Sumner 
was  keenly  solicitous  about  the  welfare  of  his  younger 
brother  and  sisters.  The  nature  of  this  solicitude  he 
reveals  to  Hillard.  "  It  is  of  the  education  of  my 


90  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

younger  brother  and  sisters  that  I  most  think,"  he 
wrote  ;  "  and  I  wish  I  were  at  home  to  aid  them  in 
their  studies,  to  stimulate  them,  and  teach  them  to 
be  ambitious.  I  have  written  to  my  mother  at  length 
on  this  subject,  for  I  know  no  one  on  whom  the 
responsibility  of  their  education  now  depends  more 
than  myself.  I  have  no  right  to  trouble  you  on  this 
subject,  but  I  cannot  forbear  saying  that  you  would 
render  me  a  very  great  service,  if  you  would  advise 
with  my  mother  about  this.  ...  I  wish  that  the 
three  younger  children  should  have  a  competent 
French  instructor  to  give  them  lessons  ...  in 
speaking  and  reading  this  language.  ...  I  am 
anxious  that  my  sisters  should  have  the  best  educa 
tion  the  country  will  afford  ;  this  I  know,  their 
portion  of  our  father's  estate  will  amply  give  them  ; 
and  further,  to  that  purpose  most  freely  do  I  devote 
whatever  present  or  future  interest  I  may  have  in  it 
.  .  .  this  may  be  counted  upon,  that,  in  any 
division  of  my  father's  property  as  regards  my  sisters, 
I  am  to  be  considered  entirely  out  of  the  question  ; 
so  that,  if  need  be,  reference  may  be  had  to  this 
circumstance,  in  incurring  the  necessary  expenditure 
for  their  education.  This  I  communicate  to  your 
private  ear,  not  to  be  spoken  of,  but  to  be  used  for 
your  government  in  any  conversation  you  may  have 
with  my  mother."  It  was  ever  thus  with  the  young 
scholar,  dutiful  son  he  was  always,  and  generous  and 
devoted  brother. 

From  Italy  Sumner  passed  into  Germany,  where 
he  spent  five  interesting  months  in  the  study  of  the 
German  language,  laws,  literature,  and  society,  arid 
where  he  met  and  conversed  with  the  most  celebrated 


HERCULES    IN    THE    NEMEAN    FOREST.  91 

people  at  Vienna,  Berlin,  Munich,  Leipzig,  Heidelberg, 
and  other  cities,  such  as  Prince  Metternich,  Humboldt, 
Ranke,  Thibaut,  Savigny,  Raumer,  and  Mittermaier. 

From  Berlin  he  writes  Hillard  :  "  I  fain  would  rest 
here  all  the  winter,  pursuing  my  studies  and  min 
gling  in  this  learned  and  gay  world.  I  know  every 
body,  and  am  engaged  every  day.  All  the  distin 
guished  professors  I  have  seen  familiarly,  or  received 
them  at  my  own  room.  Raumer  and  Ranke,  the 
historians  ;  of  these  two  Ranke  pleases  me  the  most  : 
he  has  the  most  vivacity,  humor,  and,  I  should  think, 
genius,  and  is  placed  before  Raumer  here.  .  .  . 
Humboldt  is  very  kind  to  me.  He  is  placed  at  the 
head  of  the  conversers  of  Germany.  .  .  .  Savigny 
I  know  well,  and  have  had  the  great  pleasure  of  dis 
cussing  with  him  the  question  of  codification.  .  .  . 
He  is  placed,  by  common  consent,  at  the  head  of 
jurisprudence  in  Germany,  and,  you  may  say,  upon 
the  whole  continent." 

From  Heidelberg  he  writes  Judge  Story  :  "  I  am 
here  in  this  beautiful  place  to  study  German,  before 
I  take  my  final  leap  to  America.  Lovely  it  is,  even 
in  this  season  [winter],  with  its  hills  '  in  russet  clad '  ; 
but  lovely,  indeed,  must  it  be  when  they  are  invested 
with  the  green  and  purple  of  summer  and  autumn. 
.  .  .  I  have  long  talks  with  Mittermaier,  who  is 
a  truly  learned  man,  and,  like  yourself,  works  too 
hard.  We  generally  speak  French,  though  sometimes 
I  attempt  German,  and  he  attempts  English  ;  but  we 
are  both  happy  to  return  to  the  universal  language 
of  the  European  world.  I  like  Thibaut  very  much. 
He  is  now  aged  but  cheerful.  His  conversation  is 
very  interesting,  and  abounds  with  scholarship  ;  if  he 


92  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

were  not  so  modest  I  should  think  him  pedantic.  In 
every  other  sentence  he  quotes  a  phrase  from  the  Pan 
dects  or  a  classic.  It  has  been  a  great  treat  to  me  to 
talk  familiarly,  as  I  have,  with  the  two  distinguished 
heads  of  the  great  schools,  pro  and  con,  on  the  subject 
of  codification — Savigny  and  Thibaut.  I  have  heard 
their  views  from  their  own  lips,  and  have  had  the 
honor  of  receiving  them  in  my  own  room." 

After  an  absence  of  twelve  months  on  the  continent, 
Sumner  returned  to  England  where  he  was  the 
recipient  of  renewed  attentions  from  the  leaders  in 
the  British  world  of  letters,  politics,  and  law,  during 
the  few  weeks  which  remained  to  him  before  he 
sailed  for  America.  James  A.  Wortley  wrote  him 
on  the  eve  of  his  departure  :  "  You  have  had  better 
opportunities  of  seeing  all  classes  of  society,  and  all 
that  is  interesting  among  us,  than  any  other  of  your 
countrymen,  and  I  trust  that  your  experience  may 
not  disincline  you  to  revisit  us."  Mrs.  Basil  Mon 
tagu  wrote:  "We  shall  long  and  kindly  remember 
you.  You  have  made  an  impression  on  this  country, 
equally  honorable  to  England  and  to  you.  We  have 
convinced  you  that  we  know  how  to  value  truth  and 
dignified  simplicity,  and  you  have  taught  us  to  think 
much  more  highly  of  your  country,  from  which  we 
have  hitherto  seen  no  such  men."  Lady  Carlisle  and 
Robert  Ingham  actually  shed  tears  when  the  young 
scholar  took  leave  of  them.  Sumner  landed  in  New 
York  May  3,  1840.  He  was  then  twenty-nine  years 
old,  and  had  been  abroad  twenty-nine  months.  The 
long  period  of  preparation  was  ended,  and  the  long 
period  of  labor  begun.  Hercules  has  at  last  emerged 
from  the  Nemean  Forest  with  his  club. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS. 

THE  great  preparation  has  now  come  to  a  close. 
Out  of  the  forest  of  Old  World  ideas,  society,  and 
institutions  our  hero  has  emerged,  armed  cap-a-pie 
for  the  labors  of  manhood — of  life.  The  study  of  the 
law  formed,  in  truth,  but  a  part  of  this  preparation. 
Its  science,  not  its  practice,  excited  his  enthusiasm. 
He  had  early  and  instinctively  turned  from  the  tech 
nicalities,  the  tergiversations,  the  gladiatorial  display, 
and  contention  of  the  legal  profession.  To  him 
they  were  the  ephemeris  of  the  long  summer 
tide  of  jurisprudence.  He  thirsted  for  the  perma 
nent,  the  ever-living  springs  and  principles  of  his  sub 
ject.  Grotius,  and  Pothier,  and  Mansfield,  and  Black- 
stone,  Story,  and  Savigny  were  the  immortal  heights 
to  which  he  aspired.  He  had  neither  the  tastes  nor 
the  talents  to  emulate  the  Erskines  or  the  Choates  of 
the  bar. 

His  vast  readings  in  the  field  of  history  and  liter 
ature  contributed  also  to  his  splendid  outfit.  So,  too, 
his  wide  contact  and  association  with  the  leading 
spirits  of  the  times.  All  combined  to  teach  him  to 
know  himself,  and  the  universal  verities  of  man  and 
society — to  distinguish  the  enduring  substance  of  life 
from  its  merely  accidental  and  evanescent  phases 
and  phenomena.  He  had  proved  himself  an  apt 


94  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

disciple,  had  laid  up  in  his  soul  the  grand  lessons  of 
the  book  of  truth. 

He  found  abroad  what  he  had  found  at  home,  the 
same  open  page  of  this  book  —  MAN  everywhere,  hu 
man  society,  human  thoughts,  human  strivings. 
Beneath  differences  of  languages,  governments,  man 
ners,  customs,  religions,  he  discerned  the  human  prin 
ciple  and  passion,  which  make  all  races  kin,  all  men 
brothers.  In  strange  and  distant  lands  he  had  found 
the  human  heart  with  its  beatitudes,  friendships, 
heroisms  ;  the  human  intellect  with  its  never-ending 
movement  and  progress.  Home  he  found,  a  common 
destiny,  wherever  he  met  common  ideas  and  aspira 
tions.  And  these  he  had  but  to  look  around  to  be 
hold.  The  young  American  felt  himself  a  citizen  of 
an  immense  over-nation,  a  world  of  federated  human 
hopes  and  interests.  To  Europe  he  had  gone,  him 
self  he  had  seen,  and  conquered.  He  had  glimpsed 
the  promised  land  of  international  fellowship  and 
peace,  had  cast  out  of  his  own  mind  the  evil  genius 
of  war.  He  returned  to  his  country  proud  that  he 
was  an  AMERICAN,  prouder  that  he  was  a  MAN. 

He  had  come  back  determined  to  falsify  the  fears 
of  friends  that  his  long  residence  in  Europe  would 
wean  him  from  the  law,  by  taking  up  with  zest  and 
energy  its  practice,  where  he  had  dropped  it  more 
than  two  years  before.  But  good  resolutions  are 
more  easily  formed  than  performed,  as  he  must  have 
soon  perceived  in  his  own  case.  Several  months 
slipped  by  after  his  return  before  he  was  ready  to  re 
sume  his  place  in  his  profession.  Alas !  he  was  full 
of  Europe,  her  thousand  and  one  charms  and  felicities, 
her  antiquities,  her  libraries,  her  schools  of  learning, 


PERIOD    OF    LABOR    BEGINS.  95 

her  art  and  literary  treasures,  and  institutions,  her 
brilliant  society  and  celebrated  men.  These  filled  his 
thoughts,  and,  during  those  first  months  following 
his  arrival  in  Boston,  were  ever  on  his  lips.  It  was 
clear  that  he  was  more  than  ever  in  love  with  Europa. 

If  Europa  is  irresistible,  Themis  is  a  most  exacting 
mistress,  who  tolerates  no  rivals  near  her  throne. 
She  abhors  a  divided  mind  as  nature  is  reputed  to 
abhor  a  vacuum.  Whoso  would  win  her  favors  must 
devote  himself,  his  whole  self,  body  and  soul,  to  her 
service,  otherwise  she  frowns,  and  a  frown  of  Themis 
no  lawyer  in  his  right  mind  is  disposed  to  invite. 
Certainly  Sumner  was  in  no  humor,  much  as  he 
panted  for  Europa,  to  call  down  upon  his  head  such  a 
misfortune.  And  so  at  the  close  of  the  summer  vaca 
tion  he  took  his  old  seat  in  his  office  at  No.  4  Court 
street  and  waited  for  clients.  The  clients  came,  and 
with  them  the  routine  and  drudgery  of  his  profession, 
which  he,  alas,  abhorred  quite  as  strongly  as  Themis 
abhors  a  divided  mind.  "I  found  the  bill  of  costs 
without  understanding  it,"  he  once  wrote  a  brother 
lawyer  with  evident  disgust;  "and  I  sometimes  be 
lieve  that  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  understand  anything 
which  concerns  such  matters." 

He  had  important  cases  intrusted  to  his  care,  the 
pleadings  and  evidence  connected  with  them  he  p^e- 
pared  with  his  accustomed  thoroughness  and  indus 
try,  and  at  times  he  deceived  himself  into  the  belief 
that  his  affections  were  bound  up  with  the  stern- 
browed  divinity  of  the  law,  and  that  he  was  disap 
pointing  the  predictions  of  those  people  who  had  felt 
when  he  went  abroad  that  he  was  disabling  himself 
for  the  successful  practice  of  his  profession.  Ah!  was 


96  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

he  not  content,  did  he  not  enjoy  his  work?  Was  he 
not  after  all  going  to  be  a  success  at  the  bar  ?  He 
meant  to  be  content,  he  wanted  to  take  pleasure  in 
his  work,  he  hoped  to  reach  eminence  as  a  lawyer. 
But  it  was  not  for  him  to  change  his  mental  and  moral 
constitution,  which  mental  and  moral  constitution, 
not  Europe,  unfitted  him  for  the  practice  of  the  law. 
He  worked  early  and  late  at  his  desk,  was  punctual 
and  faithful  in  his  devotion  to  his  legal  business,  tried, 
in  fact,  to  substitute  industry  for  interest,  but  it  was 
plain,  notwithstanding  his  efforts  that  he  was  not 
at  home  in  the  ordinary  labors  of  his  profession. 
It  was  only  a  few  weeks  after  the  resumption  of  his 
place  at  the  bar  that  he  wrote  his  friend,  Lieber  : 
"  I  write  you  from  my  office,  where  I  install  myself  at 
nine  o'clock,  and  sit  often  without  quitting  my  chair 
till  two;  then  take  the  chair  again  at  half-past  three, 
which  I  hold  till  night.  Never  at  any  time  since  I 
have  been  at  the  bar  have  I  been  more  punctual  and 
faithful.  .  .  .  Still  I  will  not  disguise  from  you, 
my  dear  Lieber,  that  I  feel  while  I  am  engaged  upon 
these  things,  that,  though  I  earn  my  daily  bread,  I  lay 
up  none  of  the  bread  of  life.  My  mind,  soul,  heart, 
are  not  improved  or  invigorated  by  the  practice  of  my 
profession;  by  overhauling  papers,  old  letters,  and 
sifting  accounts,  in  order  to  see  if  there  be  anything 
on  which  to  plant  an  action.  The  sigh  will  come  for 
a  canto  of  Dante,  a  rhapsody  of  Homer,  a  play  of 
Schiller.  But  I  shall  do  my  devoir."  But  to  do  his 
devoir  by  one  mistress  while  his  heart  belonged  to 
another  was  not  enough.  In  truth,  during  office  hours 
he  sometimes  bestowed  upon  literature  what  was 
alone  due  to  the  law.  W.  W.  Story,  who  spent  two 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  97 

years  as  a  student  of  legal  practice  in  the  office  of 
Hillard  and  Sumner,  recounts  how  the  latter  would 
talk  to  him  "  by  the  hour  of  the  great  jurists,  and  their 
lives,  and  habits  of  thought";  telling  him,  he  goes  on, 
"all  sorts  of  interesting  anecdotes  of  great  barristers 
and  judges.  Hillard  and  he  and  I  used  to  talk  infi 
nitely,  not  only  of  law,  but  of  poetry  and  general  liter 
ature  and  authors,  when  business  would  allow — nay, 
sometimes  when  it  would  not  allow — but  who  can  re 
sist  temptation  with  such  tastes  as  we  all  had  ?" 

The  intellect  and  spirit  of  the  young  jurist  were 
touched  to  finer  issues  than  those  which  are  wont  to 
flow  from  the  contentions  of  individuals  over  the 
possession  of  some  material  object  or  interest.  His 
soul  hungered  for  the  heavenly  manna  of  noble 
thoughts,  thirsted  for  the  sweet  waters  of  noble  living. 
How,  then,  could  he  be  satisfied  with  the  wretched 
food  and  drink  which  his  profession  offered  ?  The 
practice  of  the  law  was  accordingly  for  him  always  a 
"  tug  and  sweat" — never  a  delight.  The  joy  of  life 
streamed  over  him  and  through  him  from  other 
sources,  from  bright  memories  of  exquisite  experiences 
across  the  sea,  from  incomparable  friendships  at  home 
with  their  beautiful  loves,  sympathies,  endeavors  after 
the  best  in  the  past,  the  present,  and  in  each  other. 

Ah!  that  brilliant  band  of  American  scholars  and 
men  of  letters,  how  they  haunt  the  pen  which  is  writ 
ing  this  page.  What  a  goodly  fellowship  they  made, 
Sumner  and  they!  They  are  all  gone  now,  but  have 
left  in  the  firmament  their  "  trailing  clouds  of  glory." 
No,  not  gone,  the  distant  has  become  the  near,  for 
along  the  "  corridors  of  time  "  we  catch  from  Sumner 
glimpses  of  them  as  they  were,  of  their  fair  forms, 
7 


98  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

accents  of  their  golden  voices.  Longfellow  was  at 
this  time  writing  some  of  his  happiest  verses.  "  The 
Psalm  of  Life,"  "Voices  of  the  Night,"  "  Excelsior"; 
Prescott  was  preparing  his  "  Conquest  of  Mexico"; 
Bancroft  was  at  work  on  his  great  "  History  of  the 
United  States  ";  Sparks  had  just  published  his  "Life  of 
Washington";  Greenleaf  his  first  volume  on  the  "  Law 
of  Evidence";  Judge  Story  was  struggling  with  poor 
health  and  his  treatise  on  "  Partnership"  ;  Horace 
Mann  was  beginning  his  revolution  in  our  common 
school  education  ;  and  Dr.  Howe  was  just  introducing 
his  system  for  the  education  of  the  blind,  and  in  the 
act  of  endowing  Laura  Bridgman's  fingers  with  facul 
ties  of  speech,  of  seeing,  and  hearing. 

With  all  of  these  Sumner  was  intimate,  serving  each 
in  his  labors,  rejoicing  with  each  in  his  successes. 
Sumner,  after  his  return  from  Europe,  was  in  fact  one 
of  the  social  lions  of  the  city.  The  doors  of  all  the 
best  families  opened  to  welcome  him,  and  to  shower 
upon  him  distinguished  attentions.  He  was  perhaps 
for  several  years  thereafter  the  most  popular  young 
man  among  the  "  Brama  Caste  "  of  Boston.  If  he  got 
not  the  bread  of  life  from  the  practice  of  the  law,  he 
got  it  surely  from  this  bright  throng  of  elect  spirits 
and  kindred  minds.  He  never  tired  of  them,  nor  they 
of  him.  Sometimes  in  his  office  they  and  he  broke 
together  this  food  of  the  soul,  sometimes  he  partook 
of  it  with  them  in  their  several  homes.  He  loved  all 
who  were  striving  after  excellence.  They  were  his 
friends,  they  were  his  brothers.  It  was  so  with  Wash 
ington  Allston,  the  artist  ;  with  Macready,  the  actor; 
Emerson,  the  philosopher ;  Phillips,  the  orator-re 
former  ;  Felton,  the  scholar  ;  Channing,  the  philan- 


PERIOD    OF    LABOR    BEGINS.  99 

thropist  ;  and,  a  little  later,  with  Parker,  the  militant 
preacher  of  righteousness.  They  were  all  his  friends 
and  brothers,  giving  to  and  receiving  from  him  love 
and  sympathy,  as  each  in  his  own  way  was  doing  with 
his  might  that  which  was  required  of  him. 

If  he  took  no  pleasure  in  the  details  of  professional 
work,  there  never  was  a  man  who  took  greater  delight 
in  personal  service  for  a  friend  or  the  public.  No 
exertion  seemed  to  him  too  much,  no  expenditure  of 
time  too  large  to  make  for  friendship's  sake,  or  for  the 
sake  of  a  benefaction  or  enterprise  from  which  the 
people  were  to  derive  advantage,  the  citizenship  of  the 
country  to  be  elevated,  the  humanity  of  the  world  pro 
moted.  An  immense  love  of  unselfish,  unresting  labor 
was  in  his  heart,  It  was  through  his  disinterested 
and  persevering  efforts  that  a  subscription  of  $2,500 
was  raised  for  the  purchase  of  Crawford's  "  Orpheus  " 
for  the  Athenaeum.  This  good  turn  was  a  great  and 
opportune  service  to  the  artist,  and  in  another  way 
hardly  less  so  to  the  city.  It  was  Sumner  who  super 
intended  the  unpacking  of  the  marble  masterpiece, 
and  it  was  he  who  watched  anxiously  over  it,  the 
mending  of  it  (it  was  unluckily  broken  in  transitu}, 
and  the  setting  of  it  up  so  that  the  interest  and  genius 
of  his  friend  might  not  suffer  in  the  estimation  of  the 
public  and  of  the  critics. 

It  was  he  who  went  to  the  help  of  Horace  Mann  in 
the  erection  of  a  new  normal  school-house  at  Bridge- 
water,  by  urging  the  legislature  to  make  the  needed 
appropriation  for  this  purpose,  and  when  the  legisla 
ture  granted  but  a  half  of  the  required  sum,  by  rais 
ing  through  private  subscription  and  on  his  personal 
note  the  other  half. 


100  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

And  when  his  friend,  Moncton  Milnes,  whom  he  de 
scribed  as  "a  Tory  who  does  not  forget  the  people, 
and  a  man  of  fashion  with  sensibilities  alive  to  virtue 
and  merit  among  the  simple,  the  poor,  and  the  lowly," 
was  proposing  "to  introduce  into  Parliament  a  meas 
ure  for  private  executions  .  .  .  and  to  enforce 
his  recommendation  by  the  example  of  the  United 
States,"  to  whom  should  he  turn  for  information  but 
to  the  young  scholar  whose  heart  beat  in  unison  with 
every  good  thought,  every  humane  desire  for  the  bet 
terment  of  his  kind,  the  world  over?  All  classes  of 
the  community  interested  him,  had  a  lien  upon  his 
affections  and  labors.  There  were  none  above  his  in 
telligent  criticism,  none  beneath  his  intelligent  sym 
pathy.  He  belonged  to  his  friends,  he  belonged  to 
the  public  even  then  as  few  men  have  ever  belonged 
to  either  or  to  both. 

He  took  an  active  interest  in  the  condition  of  those 
evil-doers  of  society,  whose  conduct  has  brought  them 
under  the  displeasure  of  the  State,  and  who  have 
been  committed  to  the  various  penal  receptacles 
erected  for  the  detention  of  their  class,  Their  very 
helplessness  appealed  to  him  for  wise  and  humane 
treatment.  The  humanity  in  him  was  touched  by 
the  humanity  of  the  inhabitants  of  penal  institutions. 
They  were  men,  men  who  had,  indeed,  forfeited  for  a 
season,  or  forever,  it  may  be,  their  liberties,  but  not 
their  humanity,  not  their  claims  upon  our  enlight 
ened  sympathies  and  Christian  regards.  And  so  he 
with  others  pondered  how  to  eliminate  the  barbarous 
elements  from  prison  discipline,  and  to  introduce  in 
stead  a  treatment  firm  and  just,  without  cruelty  and 
vindictiveness.  His  interest  in  the  subject  of  Prison 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  IOI 

Reform  was  warm  and  rational,  and  his  labors  in  its 
behalf  earnest  and  efficient. 

It  was  with  him  during  this  early  period  exactly 
and  always  as  Dr.  Howe  said  in  a  letter  written  at 
this  time  :  "I  know  not  where  you  may  be,  or  what 
you  may  be  about  ;  but  I  know  what  you  are  not 
about.  You  are  not  seeking  your  own  pleasure,  or 
striving  to  advance  your  own  interests:  you  are,  I 
warrant  me,  on  some  errand  of  kindness,  some 
work  for  a  friend,  or  for  the  public.  .  .  .  You 
ought  to  be  the  happiest  man  alive  —  or,  at  least,  of 
my  acquaintance  —  for  you  are  the  most  generous  and 
disinterested.  ...  I  love  you,  Sumner,  and  am 
only  vexed  with  you  because  you  will  not  love  your 
self  a  little  more." 

Men  are  not  happy  because  they  ought  to  be 
happy.  Human  happiness  hath  no  common  receipt 
for  its  creation,  is  the  product  of  no  regulation,  com 
bination  of  circumstances,  but,  like  the  winds  of 
destiny,  it  comes  we  know  not  how,  or  eludes  us  we 
know  not  why.  Sumner,  in  sooth,  ought  to  have  been 
the  "happiest  man  alive";  but,  all  the  same,  he  was 
not  the  happiest  man  alive,  was,  perversely  enough, 
far  from  this  superlative  state  of  felicity.  For  he  was 
strangely  dissatisfied  with  himself,  his  progress,  and 
achievements.  What  had  he  after  all  his  pursuit  of 
knowledge  accomplished  ?  What  success  had  re 
warded  the  enthusiastic  study  of  years  to  become  a 
lawyer?  What  tangible  thing  had  he  to  show  for  it 
all,  what  return  of  emolument  and  distinction  was  he 
receiving  upon  the  vast  capital  which  he  had  invested 
in  his  profession  ?  Nothing,  forsooth,  but  a  few  pal 
try  dollars  and  grinding  drudgery.  Others,  who  had 


IO2  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

begun  with  him  or  since  him  in  the  forensic  race, 
without  his  lofty  standard  of  what  a  lawyer  should 
be,  without  his  extraordinary  legal  learning,  were 
leaving  him  behind  in  an  increasing  clientage  and  the 
annual  money  value  of  their  profession  and  practice. 
With  a  lower  legal  standard,  and  less  legal  learning, 
they  had  obtained  what  his  endeavors  had  missed — 
success.  Ah,  and  what  a  wizard  is  success  !  How  in 
the  eyes  of  the  world  it  is  able  to  glorify  vulgarity 
and  insignificance,  cloak  crime,  piece  out  incompet- 
ency,  make  ignorance  blissful,  popularize  meanness, 
cunning,  chicanery,  and  all  manner  of  low  and  selfish 
qualities  and  energies.  And  what  a  fiend  from  the 
pit  is  failure  !  How  it  is  able  to  make  virtue  ridicul 
ous,  wisdom  contemptible,  benevolence  eccentric,  and 
genius  itself  folly.  All  these  wonders  can  success,  as 
a  money-getter,  or  failure,  as  a  money-getter,  per 
form  in  the  eyes  of  the  children  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  For  the  children  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  worship  but  one  god — the  Almighty  Dollar — and 
look  with  one  accord  upon  Success  as  its  supreme 
prophet. 

And  was  the  universal  deity  and  its  supreme 
prophet  affecting  Sumner's  happiness,  working 
within  him  a  spirit  of  unrest  and  discontent  at  the 
progress  which  he  was  making  in  his  profession  ? 
We  think  they  were.  He  was  ambitious  to  succeed 
at  the  bar.  He,  too,  desired  success,  to  build  up  a 
lucrative  practice,  to  be  eminent  not  alone  for  jurid 
ical  learning  but  for  forensic  eminence  as  well. 
Although  not  at  all  disposed  to  deify  the  root  of  all 
evil,  he  nevertheless,  Yankee  that  he  was,  entertained 
a  very  proper  respect  for  it  as  a  good  friend,  and 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  103 

better  servant.  He  heartily  desired  its  company  and 
more  of  it.  And  this  desire  was  neither  unnatural 
nor  unworthy.  It  was  as  it  ought  to  have  been,  for 
though  the  almighty  dollar,  like  fire,  makes  a  bad 
master,  yet  it  makes,  too,  an  incomparable  servant. 
A  good  round  fee  from  a  client  excites  emotions  of  a 
highly  pleasurable  character,  gratifies  two  of  the 
most  constant  and  powerful  passions  of  the  human 
mind — the  desire  for  power  and  the  desire  for  wealth 
which  is  at  bottom,  but  a  variation  of  the  same  thing 
— the  passion  for  power.  This  gratification  was 
denied  Sumner  in  any  measure  proportioned  to  his 
great  abilities  and  acquisitions.  He  was  too  am 
bitious  to  be  satisfied  with  any  success  which  fell 
short  of  the  first  rank  in  the  law.  He  aimed  un 
doubtedly  to  reach  the  top,  and  to  stand  with  the 
leaders  of  the  bar.  He  was  not  realizing  these  great 
expectations — had  fallen  short  of  his  mark.  The  sting 
of  ultimate  failure,  in  those  regards,  and  the  conse 
quent  promise  of  a  second-rate  career  for  him  in  his 
chosen  profession  haunted  him;  and  then,  too,  per 
haps,  mingling  with  these  reflections  there  crept  into 
his  thoughts  a  doubt  of  himself,  of  his  powers,  whether 
after  all  he  had  chosen  wisely  when  he  chose  the  law, 
whether,  in  truth,  he  had  the  tastes  or  the  talents  for 
its  successful  practice;  such  thoughts  assailed  him 
where  he  was  most  vulnerable,  and  for  a  season  made 
havoc  of  his  happiness. 

Seeing  how  it  was  with  him,  Sumner  became  dis 
posed  to  try  the  efficacy  of  a  partial  change.  Like 
his  father,  he  was  ready  to  abandon  a  business  for 
which  he  was  not  fitted,  in  favor  of  a  position  more 
to  his  tastes  and  better  adapted  to  his  talents.  This 


104          .  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

was  no  other  than  the  office  of  official  reporter  to  the 
Supreme  Court  at  Washington.  His  friend,  the  old 
reporter,  Mr.  Peters,  of  Philadelphia,  being  about  to 
retire,  Judge  Story  consulted  Sumner  in  relation  to 
the  appointment,  and  found  him  willing  to  accept  the 
office.  The  Judge  had  thoroughly  tested  his  pupil's 
reportorial  ability  and  had  had  every  reason  to  be 
well  satisfied  with  it.  Three  volumes  of  Judge  Story's 
decisions,  done  by  Sumner,  had  issued  from  the  press, 
the  third  volume  since  his  return  from  Europe.  They 
abundantly  proved  Sumner's  qualifications  for  the 
higher  office,  and  should  have,  in  connection 
with  the  Judge's  indorsement,  insured  him  the  ap 
pointment.  All  the  same,  Sumner  was  not  appointed, 
but  another  gentleman.  Notwithstanding,  the  posi 
tion  was  entirely  unsought  by  him,  he  was  even  then 
strongly  of  the  opinion  that  the  office  should  seek 
the  man,  not  the  man  the  office,  he  felt  keenly  the 
failure  of  the  Court  to  select  him.  Destiny  was  not 
ready  to  send  him  to  Washington,  nor  was  it  in  her 
book  to  have  him  there  in  any  such  character.  But,  as 
destiny  does  not  take  her  agents  into  her  confidence, 
but  sends  them  forth  into  life  and  its  battles  with 
sealed  orders,  how  was  the  struggling  young  lawyer 
to  know  what  was  in  store  for  him,  whether  weal  or 
woe?  The  future  seemed  to  him  unpropitious 
enough.  His  disappointment  plunged  him  into  deep 
dejection  of  spirit.  He  had  crossed  into  his  thirties. 
The  flush  of  youthful  promise  was  behind  him.  He 
was  approaching  the  summer  solstice  of  middle  life 
where  promise  must  ripen  into  performance,  for  hard- 
by  lies  the  autumn  of  waning  life.  If  he  looked 
around  he  saw  all  his  friends  in  the  full  tide  of 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  105 

accomplishment.  Felton  was  in  Harvard  and  at  the 
head  of  classical  scholarship  in  the  United  States  ; 
Longfellow  was  in  Harvard  and  at  the  head  of  the 
poets  of  America  ;  Prescott  had  achieved  world-wide 
fame,  and  the  leadership  of  American  men  of  letters; 
Howe  was  winning  golden  triumphs  in  philanthropy; 
and  Phillips  had  risen  to  the  front  rank  of  the  then 
living  masters  of  popular  eloquence.  They  were  all 
up  and  doing  something,  blossom  in  them  had  given 
place  to  rich  fruit,  while  he  was  doing  nothing,  living 
a  barren  life.  He  fell  into  a  state  of  great  gloom  and 
wretchedness,  no  longer  cared  to  live.  Giant  despair 
had  him  fast  enough  in  his  villainous  castle,  where 
he  has  held  for  a  season  and  seasons  the  noblest 
minds  in  all  ages  of  this  sunlit  and  storm-swept 
planet  of  ours. 

His  friends  rallied  to  his  rescue  with  their  sympathy 
and  cheer.  Cleveland,  one  of  the  "  Five  of  Clubs,"  the 
reader  will  recall,  and  now  under  sentence  of  death, 
poor  fellow,  wrote  him  from  Havana  :  "  With  you, 
too,  dear  Charley,  I  sympathize  and  mourn  over  your 
disappointment  in  the  hope  you  had  of  getting  the 
place  which  Mr.  Peters  has  vacated.  It  would  have 
been  a  delightful  office  for  you,  and  I  had  set  my 
heart  upon  your  obtaining  it.  I  am  the  worst  person 
in  the  world  to  preach  courage  and  perseverance  in 
the  time  of  disappointment,  and  yet  I  can  see  as  plainly 
as  any  one  the  need  there  is  of  them.  .  .  .  For 
you,  it  seems  to  me,  this  heroism  is  peculiarly  neces 
sary  ;  not  from  anything  in  your  real  position  in  life 
which  renders  it  so,  but  because  you  have  come  to 
take  sad  and  gloomy  views  of  life.  With  your  aquire- 
ments  and  fine  talents,  and  with  the  standing  which 


106  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

you  have  achieved,  the  world  is  open  before  you  in 
the  brightest  colors,  if  you  will  but  see  it  so.  Is  all 
that  has  been  said  about  the  greatness  and  dignity  of 
your  profession  a  humbug  ?  Is  the  law  a  mere  string 
of  dull  technicalities,  or  is  it  a  field  worthy  of  the 
greatest  minds  ?  .  .  .  I  mourn  to  see  by  your 
letter  that  you  have  forsaken  society,  and  that  your 
mind  is  saddened  ;  because  I  can  see  as  plainly  as  the 
day  that  there  is  no  need  of  this." 

And  Felton  thus  :  "  What  right  have  you,  dearly 
beloved  Charley,  to  a  heavy  heart  ?  Of  all  the  men  I 
have  ever  known,  not  one  ever  had  less  real  reason  for 
despondency  than  you.  I  told  you  the  other  day,  at 
your  office,  what  there  was  in  my  heart.  There  must 
be  something  morbid  in  the  views  of  life  which  you 
permit  yourself  to  indulge.  ...  To  me — and  I 
must  think  mine  a  healthier  state  of  feeling — life  is  a 
precious  gift  ;  and,  with  all  the  sufferings  which  are  a 
part  of  its  condition,  something  to  be  cherished  with 
gratitude,  preserved  with  care,  devoted  to  serious  duty 
alternating  with  social  enjoyment  and  the  exercise  of 
the  affections  ;  and  when  the  time  comes,  resigned 
with  submission  to  the  Divine  will.  .  .  .  Law  and 
literature,  in  the  highest  form  of  both,  are  your  chosen, 
and  should  be  your  fixed,  pursuits  .  .  .  but  they 
and  all  secular  pursuits  are  insufficient,  if  you  will, 
Hamlet-like,  brood  over  the  unhealthy  visions  of  an 
excessive  introspection,  if  you  will  keep  out  of  the 
way  of  the  possibility  of  the  best  form  of  human  hap 
piness."  A  little  later,  Felton  remonstrated  with  him 
in  respect  of  his  disregard  of  the  rules  of  health,  for 
the  state  of  Sumner's  health  was  beginning  to  give 
his  friends  no  little  anxiety  about  this  time.  "  You 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  107 

must  take  better  care  of  yourself,"  wrote  Felton. 
"You  must  not  work  at  midnight.  Arrange  your 
hours  better,  divide  the  task  among  more  days,  and 
give  the  nights  to  friends  and  sleep.  .  .  .  It  is 
wrong  to  add  to  the  inevitable  sum  of  illness  by  heed 
less  and  needless  exposures,  by  striding  from  volume 
to  volume  of  *  Vesey  '  '  in  the  mad  boots.'  Remember 
old  Chamisso,  and  be  wise." 

Howe  from  Rome  added  his  warning  note.  He  is 
undisguisedly  anxious  concerning  his  best-loved 
friend,  who  he  has  learned  is  breaking  down  phys 
ically,  and  who  he  suspects  is  nevertheless  drawing 
desperately  upon  his  "  capital  of  health  and  strength." 
Scolded  the  good  doctor:  "You  may  be  again  work 
ing  hard  all  day  ;  eating  without  regard  to  time,  or 
quality,  or  quantity  ;  sitting  two-thirds  of  the  night, 
using  up  the  whole  stock  of  nervous  power  accumu 
lated  by  one  night's  sleep,  and  anticipating  that  of 
the  next  by  forced  loans  ;  steaming  about  on  your 
long  legs,  and  running  to  and  from  Cambridge,  and 
up  and  down  Boston  streets,  as  if  your  body  were  as 
immortal  as  your  spirit.  You  may  be  doing  all  this, 
and  yet  I  am  none  the  less  uneasy  about  you.  You 
know  or  you  ought  to  know,  your  constitutional  pre 
disposition  ;  and  that  the  continuance  of  your  life,  more 
than  that  of  most  men,  is  dependent  upon  your  treat 
ment  of  yourself.  I  trust  that  you  have  even  now 
abandoned  that  morbid  and  unnatural  state  of  mind 
which  made  you  careless  whether  you  should  live 
or  die.  .  .  .  All  this  sermonizing  and  exhorting 
will  do  no  good,  I  suppose  ;  but  I  have  done  what  I 
could.  And  now  if  you  will  go  on,  neglect  exercise, 
neglect  sleep,  study  late  and  early,  stoop  over  your 


108  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

table,  work  yourself  to  death,  grieve  all  your  friends, 
and  break  my  heart  ;  for  where,  dear  Charlie,  at  any 
time  of  life,  shall  I  find  a  friend  to  love  as  I  love  you  ?" 

All  this  warning,  remonstrance,  and  entreaty  fell 
upon  unhearing  ears.  Their  object  came  not  out  of 
his  dejection  of  mind,  plunged  instead  over  his  eyes 
in  work,  turned  night  into  day  in  the  excesses  and 
madness  of  labor  He  became  a  frequent  contributor 
to  the  "  Law  Reporter,"  undertook  to  edit  Vesey's 
reports  in  twenty  volumes.  The  publishers  con 
tracted  with  him  for  the  completion  of  the  edition  at 
a  fixed  time,  which  necessitated  the  production  of  a 
volume  every  fortnight  for  the  printer.  The  task 
was  not  inspiring,  involved,  indeed,  an  infinite  amount 
of  the  drudgery  of  legal  composition.  But  Sumner 
was  not  a  man  on  whom  an  obligation  to  do  a  thing 
at  a  certain  time  could  sit  lightly.  He  would  do 
what  he  undertook,  and  more,  too.  And  so  with  the 
"mad  boots "  of  Chamisso  he  strode  from  tome  to 
tome,  regardless  of  sleep,  and  exercise,  and  of  life  it 
self.  Some  men  take  to  drink  to  drown  a  great  sor 
row,  Sumner  took  to  study  and  work  to  lose  his. 
He  went  on  a  "  regular  tear,"  a  furious  debauch  of 
labor  at  this  most  critical  period  of  his  development. 
On  the  long  legs  of  his  mind,  as  of  his  body,  he 
"steamed  "  from  labor  to  labor  by  night  and  by  day, 
indefatigable,  unresting,  as  if  his  "  body  were  as  im 
mortal  as  his  spirit."  The  thing  could  not  last.  He 
would  needs  "  suddenly  break  down  or  up,"  as  Howe 
put  it  to  him.  And  he  did.  At  the  completion  of  the 
fourth  volume  of  Vesey  the  crash  came,  which  well 
nigh  sent  him  to  an  untimely  grave. 

For  long  days  he  hovered  between  life  and  death, 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  109 

nearer  at  times  to  death  than  to  life.  Almost  all  his 
friends  gave  him  up,  the  doctor  gave  him  up,  all  hope 
of  his  living  seemed  to  have  faded  in  the  hearts  of  his 
family.  His  "constitutional  predisposition"  had 
come  to  claim  him,  for  he  appeared  to  be  in  a  swift 
consumption,  "  galloping,"  some  called  it.  Mary,  his 
favorite  sister,  and  a  girl  of  singular  beauty  of  per 
son  and  sweetness  of  character,  was  going  the  same 
way.  Sumner's  grief  at  her  hopeless  decline  was 
poignant  enough.  But  for  himself  he  had  no  care, 
no  wish  to  live.  The  restless  energies  of  his  mind 
gave  place  to  extreme  passivity  and  indifference  to 
his  fate.  And,  perhaps,  this  collapse  of  the  active 
principle  of  his  intellect  and  nervous  system  saved 
him.  In  this  passive  and  quiescent  state  nature  took 
him  in  hand,  stopped  the  leaks,  repaired  the  ravaged 
tissues,  renewed  the  vital  functions  and  forces  of 
mind  and  body.  And  so  it  happened  that  she  was 
taken,  and  he  was  left.  Slowly  and  reluctantly  he 
crept  back  from  the  grave,  and  into  the  strenuous, 
work-a-day  world  of  the  living,  to  its  service,  and 
struggles,  and  also  its  triumphs. 

Sumner,  during  these  early  years,  whatever  to  the 
contrary  may  be  said  of  him  during  later  ones,  was 
full  of  what  Matthew  Arnold  would  have  called 
sweetness  and  light  in  the  relations  of  life.  He  was 
the  soul  of  friendship,  amiability,  simplicity,  and  ap 
preciation  of  the  best  in  everyone  with  whom  he  was 
brought  into  association.  There  was  then  no  touch 
of  sternness  and  arrogance  in  his  temper.  The  sleep 
ing  warrior  within  him  strife  had  not  yet  awakened, 
and,  while  it  slept,  the  spirit  of  gentleness  and  love 
ordered  all  his  ways,  breathed  through  all  his  words, 


110  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

irradiated  all  his  acts.  He  chided  his  brother  George 
for  a  disposition  to  disparage  what  was  not  to  his 
tastes.  He  had  a  penchant  for  politics,  statistics,  and 
history,  and  was  inclined  to  undervalue  subjects  of 
study  other  than  these,  and  people,  however  distin 
guished,  not  given  to  them.  "I  like  to  find  good  in 
everything,"  Charles  wrote  him,  "  and  in  all  men  of 
cultivated  minds  and  good  hearts — thank  God!  — 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  good  to  be  found.  In  some  it 
shows  itself  in  one  shape,  and  in  some  in  another  ; 
some  will  select  your  favorite  themes,  while  others 
enjoy  ideality  and  its  productions  manifold.  Let  me 
ask  you  to  cultivate  a  habit  of  appreciating  others 
and  their  gifts  more  than  you  do." 

Again  he  goes  on,  "It  is  easier  to  censure  than  to 
praise ;  the  former  is  a  gratification  of  our  self- 
esteem,  while  to  praise  seems,  with  minds  too  am 
bitious  and  ungenerous,  a  tacit  admission  of  superior 
ity.  It  is  a  bane  of  society,  wherever  I  have  known 
it — and  here,  in  Boston,  as  much  as  in  London  — 
a  perpetual  seeking  for  something  which  will  dis 
parage  or  make  ridiculous  our  neighbors.  ...  I 
do  not  boast  myself  to  be  free  from  blame  on  this  ac 
count  ;  and  yet  I  try  to  find  what  is  good  and  beauti 
ful  in  all  that  I  see,  and  to  judge  my  fellow-creatures 
as  I  would  have  them  judge  me." 

And  a  couple  of  years  later,  from  a  sick  couch,  he 
recurred  to  this  sin  of  censoriousness  thus:  —  "Par 
don  me  if  I  allude  to  the  '  Galli phobia,'  which  you 
observed  in  our  friend  Lieber.  Did  you  not  see  a  re 
flection  of  your  Anglophobia?  I  think  both  you  and 
he  proceed  on  a  wrong  principle.  Man  is  properly 
formed  to  love  his  fellow-man,  and  not  to  dislike  him. 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  Ill 

I  have  always  detested  the  saying  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
that  *  he  loved  a  good  hater.'  Let  me  rather  say,  I 
love  a  good  lover.  From  the  kindly  appreciation  of 
the  character  and  condition  of  nations  and  individu 
als  what  good  influences  may  arise  !  Peace  and  good 
will  shall  then  prevail,  and  jealousies  cease." 

The  subject  of  peace  and  good-will  among  nations 
was  now  attracting  a  great  deal  of  his  attention  and 
some  of  his  best  thought.  And  the  more  he  looked 
at  the  subject,  and  the  more  deeply  he  pondered  it, 
the  more  barbarous  and  unnatural  appeared  the  war- 
spirit  which  dominated  mankind.  He  himself  had 
had  experience  of  the  universal  love  which  was  stir 
ring  in  the  universal  human  heart,  and  which  the  evil 
genius  of  war  was  hindering  of  its  reign  on  earth. 
In  the  universal  human  sympathies  and  interests, 
into  which  he  was  born  again,  he  felt,  doubtless,  the 
foreshadowing  of  the  time  of  the  new  birth  of 
peoples,  when  all  men  would  be  brothers  in  all  noble 
endeavor  and  in  one  grand  destiny,  regardless  of 
country,  or  clime,  or  creed,  or  color.  And  he  yearned 
to  hasten  this  golden  age  of  humanity,  when  "  the 
kindly  earth  shall  slumber,  lapt  in  universal  law." 

In  the  summer  of  1844,  he  expressed  himself  on 
this  topic  to  his  brother  George,  then  in  Europe,  in  no 
uncertain  tone.  He  denied  the  necessity  for  the 
maintenance  of  forts  and  fortifications,  touching  the 
world  in  general  and  America  in  particular.  Better 
if  the  vast  wealth,  locked  up  in  the  military  establish 
ments  of  Europe,  were  devoted  to  enterprises  of  a 
peaceful  character,  to  the  building  of  railways,  the 
endowment  of  benevolent  institutions,  the  depletion 
of  poverty  and  wretchedness  among  the  people.  And 


112  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

for  the  Union,  it  had  been  much  better  had  it  spent 
the  public  funds  in  supporting  eleemosynary  and 
educational  establishments  than  in  imitation  of  a 
policy  which  was  a  relic  of  barbarous  feelings  and 
practices.  The  government  had  just  erected  a  fort 
at  the  mouth  of  Boston  Harbor,  which,  to  Sumner, 
seemed  a  sheer  waste  of  the  wealth  expended  in  its 
construction.  Far  otherwise  had  it  been  with  this  im 
mense  sum  had  it  been  devoted  to  public  charities 
and  schools  of  learning. 

"The  principles  of  free  trade,"  he  concludes, "  now 
so  generally  favored,  are  antagonists  to  war.  They 
teach,  and  when  adopted  cause,  the  mutual  depend 
ence  of  nation  upon  nation.  They,  in  short,  carry 
out  among  nations  the  great  principle  of  division  of 
labor  which  obtains  among  individuals.  It  was  a 
common  and  earnest  desire  of  our  statesmen,  after 
the  last  war,  to  render  our  country  independent,  for  its 
manufactures  and  fabrics  of  all  kinds,  of  foreign 
nations.  Far  better  would  it  be,  and  more  in  har 
mony  with  God's  Providence,  if  we  were  dependent 
upon  all  nations.  Then  would  war  be  impossible.  As 
civilization  advances,  the  state  of  national  depend 
ence  is  promoted  ;  and  even  England,  at  this  moment, 
can  hardly  call  herself  independent  of  the  United 
States."  Ah  !  it  was  a  noble  dream  which  the  young 
scholar  dreamt,  and  a  glorious  vision  which  he  saw 
of  human  solidarity  and  commercial  interdependence 
"  Till  the  war-drum  throbb'd  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags 

were  furl'd 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world." 

A  year  later  Sumner  gave  utterance,  before  the 
municipal  authorities  of  Boston  on  the  Fourth  of 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  113 

July,  to  a  plea  for  universal  peace  which  was  heard 
throughout  the  English-speaking  world.  For  more 
than  sixty  years  prior  to  the  delivery  of  the  oration 
on  the  "  True  Grandeur  of  Nations,"  the  city  of 
Boston,  on  the  recurrence  of  Independence  Day,  had 
verified  the  prediction  contained  in  the  imaginary 
speech  of  John  Adams  :  "  When  we  are  in  our  graves, 
our  children  will  honor  it.  They  will  celebrate  it, 
with  thanksgiving,  with  festivity,  with  bonfires,  and 
illuminations.  On  its  annual  return,  they  will  shed 
tears,  copious,  gushing  tears,  not  of  subjection  and 
slavery,  not  of  agony  and  distress,  but  of  exultation, 
of  gratitude,  and  of  joy."  The  "  copious,  gushing 
tears  "  had  ceased  to  flow,  it  is  true,  but  in  place  of 
them  a  sorry  substitute  for  them  had  come — the 
copious,  gushing  periods  of  callow  young  orators. 
Brag  was  then  enthroned  and  offered  divine  honors 
and  oblations  in  the  vapid  and  gaudy  mouthings  of 
Mr.  Somebody's  kid-gloved  son,  who  was  incapable 
of  turning  the  occasion  to  any  timely  and  serious 
discussion  of  public  problems.  It  was  a  day  given 
up  to  the  reign  of  Unreason,  to  the  enjoyment  of  flash 
rhetoric  and  "glittering  generalities."  Men  got  drunk 
with  them  as  the  toper  gets  tipsy  off  bad  whiskey 
and  adulterated  gin.  It  was  an  annual  clearing-out 
day,  a  clearing-out  of  all  the  musty,  shop-worn, 
moth-eaten  rubbish,  remnants,  and  accumulations  of 
the  American  stock  of  self-conceit  and  national 
boastfulness. 

Sumner  followed  not  in  the  beaten  common-places 

of  sixty  years,  when  invited  to  be  the  orator  of  the 

city  July  4,  1845,  but  struck  boldly  into  a  wholly  un- 

trod  way.     Never  since  the  institution  of  these  an- 

8 


114  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

nual  discourses  on  Independence  Day,  it  is  safe  to 
say,  had  Boston  listened  to  an  address  of  such  sur 
prising  character  and  power,  as  the  one  which  fell 
from  the  lips  of  Charles  Sumner  forty-seven  years 
ago.  Nothing  more  earnest  and  throbbing  with  hu 
mane  feeling  had  been  uttered  in  the  ears  of  city  and 
country  on  the  natal  day  of  the  nation,  since  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  delivered  his  Fourth-of-July  discourse 
in  Park  Street  Church,  sixteen  years  before,  on  the 
subject  of  Slavery.  They  were  both  instinct  with  the 
spirit  of  reform,  alive  in  every  line  with  the  radical 
ism  of  the  Golden  Rule,  and  of  the  founder  of  Chris 
tianity.  And  it  fared  with  them  as  it  had  fared  with 
Jesus  eighteen  hundred  years  before.  Their  auditors 
would  have  none  of  the  radicalism  of  the  Golden 
Rule,  but  shut  themselves  tightly  within  narrow, 
self-righteous,  self-centred  ways  and  inhumanities  to 
man. 

It  was  a  great  theme  which  Sumner  proposed  to 
discuss,  and  it  is  but  fact  to  say  that  he  rose  in  his 
extraordinary  discourse  to  the  level  of  its  require 
ments,  moral  and  literary.  He  pitched  high  the 
moral  key  of  the  oration,  and  sustained  the  lofty  tone 
without  a  break  from  exordium  to  peroration.  "  In 
our  age  there  can  be  no  peace  that  is  not  honorable ; 
there  can  be  no  war  that  is  not  dishonorable.  The 
true  honor  of  a  nation  is  to  be  found  only  in  deeds  of 
justice  and  in  the  happiness  of  its  people,  all  of  which 
are  inconsistent  with  war.  In  the  clear  eye  of  Chris 
tian  judgment,  vain  are  its  victories,  infamous  are  its 
spoils.  He  is  the  true  benefactor,  and  alone  worthy 
of  honor,  who  brings  comfort  where  before  was 
wretchedness  ;  who  dries  the  tear  of  sorrow  ;  who 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  11$ 

pours  oil  into  the  wounds  of  the  unfortunate  ;  who 
feeds  the  hungry  and  clothes  the  naked  ;  who  un 
looses  the  fetters  of  the  slave  ;  who  does  justice  ;  who 
enlightens  the  ignorant ;  who  enlivens  and  exalts,  by 
his  virtuous  genius,  in  art,  in  literature,  in  science, 
the  hours  of  life  ;  who,  by  words  or  actions,  inspires 
a  love  for  God  and  for  man.  This  is  the  Christian 
hero  ;  this  is  the  man  of  honor  in  a  Christian  land. 
He  is  no  benefactor,  nor  deserving  of  honor,  what 
ever  may  be  his  worldly  renown,  whose  life  is  passed 
in  acts  of  force  ;  who  renounces  the  great  law  of 
Christian  brotherhood  ;  whose  vocation  is  blood  ; 
who  triumphs  in  battle  over  his  fellow-men.  Well 
may  old  Sir  Thomas  Browne  exclaim,  *  The  world 
does  not  know  its  greatest  men';  for  thus  far  it  has 
chiefly  discerned  the  violent  brood  of  battle,  the  armed 
men  springing  up  from  the  dragon's  teeth  sown  by 
Hate,  and  cared  little  for  the  truly  good  men,  children 
of  Love,  guiltless  of  their  country's  blood,  whose  steps 
on  earth  have  been  as  noiseless  as  an  angel's  wing." 

In  many  ways,  with  amplitudinous  scholarship, 
with  illustrations  gleaned  from  the  whole  field  of 
classical  and  modern  literature,  with  facts  and  stories 
the  most  apposite  and  thrilling,  marshaled  from  the 
wide  page  of  universal  history,  and  recited  with  mas 
terly  skill,  with  energy,  and  splendor  of  diction,  too, 
did  the  young  orator  attack  his  theme,  the  beauty  of 
peace,  and  the  barbarism  of  war.  "  Thus  far  man 
kind  has  worshiped  in  military  glory  an  idol,  com 
pared  with  which  the  colossal  images  of  ancient 
Babylon  or  modern  Hindostan  are  but  toys  ;  are  we, 
in  this  blessed  day  of  light,  in  this  blessed  land  of 
freedom,  are  we  among  the  idolators  ?  The  heaven-de- 


Il6  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

scended  injunction,  'know  thyself,'  still  speaks  to  an 
ignorant  world  from  the  distant  letters  of  gold  at 
Delphi.  Know  thyself  ;  know  that  the  moral  nature  is 
the  most  noble  part  of  man,  transcending  far  that 
part  which  is  the  seat  of  passion,  strife,  war,  nobler 
than  the  intellect  itself.  Suppose  war  to  be  decided 
by  force — where  is  the  glory?  Suppose  it  to  be  de 
cided  by  chance  —  where  is  the  glory?  No;  true 
greatness  consists  in  imitating  as  near  as  is  possible  for 
finite  man  the  perfections  of  an  infinite  Creator  ; 
above  all,  in  cultivating  those  highest  perfections, 
Justice  and  Love,  Justice,  which,  like  that  of  St. 
Louis,  shall  not  swerve  to  the  right  hand  or  the  left ; 
Love,  which,  like  that  of  William  Penn,  shall  regard 
all  mankind  of  kin.  '  God  is  angry,'  says  Plato, 

*  when  any  one  censures  a  man  like  himself,  or  praises 
a  man  of  an  opposite  character.     And  the  Godlike 
man   is  the  good   man,'     And    again,  in   another   of 
those  lovely   dialogues,  vocal  with  immortal  truth  : 
'  Nothing  resembles  God  more  than  that  man  among 
us  who  has  arrived  at  the  highest  degree  of  justice.' 
The   true   greatness  of  nations  is   in   those  qualities 
which  constitute  the  greatness  of  the  individual.  .  .  . 

The  true  grandeur  of  humanity  is  in  moral  elevation, 
sustained,  enlightened  and  decorated  by  the  intellect  of 
man.  The  truest  tokens  of  this  grandeur  in  a  State 
are  diffusion  of  the  greatest  happiness  among  the 
greatest  number,  and  that  passionless  Godlike  jus 
tice  which  controls  the  relation  of  the  State  to  other 
States,  and  to  all  the  people  who  are  committed  to 
its  charge.  But  war  crushes  with  bloody  heel  all 
justice,  all  happiness,  all  that  is  Godlike  in  man. 

*  It  is,'  says  the  eloquent  Robert  Hall,  '  the  temporary 


PERIOD  OF  LABOR  BEGINS.  1 17 

repeal  of  all  the  principles  of  virtue.'  True,  it  can 
not  be  disguised  that  there  are  passages  in  its  dreary 
annals  cheered  by  deeds  of  generosity  and  sacrifice. 
But  the  virtues  which  shed  their  charm  over  its 
horrors  are  all  borrowed  of  Peace  ;  they  are  the 
emanations  of  the  spirit  of  love,  which  is  so  strong  in 
the  heart  of  man  that  it  survives  the  rudest  assaults. 
.  .  .  God  be  praised  that  the  Roman  Emperor, 
about  to  start  on  a  distant  expedition  of  war,  encom 
passed  by  squadrons  of  cavalry  and  by  golden  eagles 
which  moved  in  the  winds,  stooped  from  his  saddle 
to  listen  to  the  prayer  of  the  humble  widow,  demand 
ing  justice  for  the  death  of  her  son  !  God  be  praised 
that  Sidney  on  the  field  of  battle  gave  with  dying 
hand  the  cup  of  cold  water  to  the  dying  soldier  !  That 
single  act  of  self-forgetful  sacrifice  has  consecrated 
the  fenny  field  of  Zutphen  far,  oh  !  far  beyond  its 
battle;  it  has  consecrated  thy  name,  gallant  Sidney, 
beyond  any  feat  of  thy  sword,  beyond  any  triumph 
of  thy  pen  !  But  there  are  hands  outstretched  else 
where  than  on  fields  of  blood  for  so  little  as  a  cup  of 
cold  water.  The  world  is  full  of  opportunities  for 
deeds  of  kindness.  Let  me  not  be  told,  then,  of  the 
virtues  of  war.  Let  not  the  acts  of  generosity  and 
sacrifice  which  have  triumphed  on  its  fields  be  in 
voked  in  its  defense.  In  the  words  of  Oriental 
imagery,  the  poisonous  tree,  though  watered  by 
nectar,  can  produce  only  the  fruit  of  death." 

The  oration  produced  a  prodigious  sensation,  not 
only  among  the  audience  in  Tremont  Temple,  where 
it  was  delivered,  but  in  the  city  also.  At  the  dinner 
in  Faneuil  Hall  which  followed  the  exercises  in  the 
Temple,  the  orator  was  subjected  to  a  fusillade  of 


Il8  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

sharp  criticism.  The  discourse  provoked  instant  and 
wide  attention  in  this  country  and  in  England,  and 
aroused  in  the  former,  in  particular,  vehement  approval 
and  disapproval.  The  demand  for  it  was  so  great  as 
to  exhaust  quickly  two  large  editions  by  the  city. 
Many  other  editions  were  subsequently  issued  by 
several  peace  societies  in  the  United  States  and  in 
Great  Britain.  Thus  it  was  that  the  oration  obtained  an 
extraordinary  circulation,  and  the  orator  sudden  fame. 
In  truth,  the  morning  after  the  Fourth,  Sumner 
awoke  to  find  himself  famous,  to  find  himself  in  a 
place  among  the  then  foremost  living  orators  of  the 
land.  He  had  ceased  to  be  a  mere  scholar  and  thinker, 
and  had  become  a  man  of  action,  a  moral  enthusiast 
as  well.  The  young  scholar  awoke  besides  to  find 
himself  at  the  parting  of  his  way  from  that  of  the 
conservative,  wealthy,  and  educated  class  with  which 
he  had  theretofore  associated  in  Boston  and  Cam 
bridge.  He  had  chosen  to  tread  not  according  to 
their  lead,  but  in  the  rugged  path  of  duty  instead,  and 
to  help  humanity  thenceforth  bear  the  heavy,  murder 
ous  cross  of  her  wrongs  and  woes. 


CHAPTER  V. 

HERCULES    TESTS    THE    TEMPER    OF    HIS    WEAPONS. 

DURING  the  earliest  years  of  the  slavery  agitation, 
Sumner  was  too  young  to  take  either  a  very  earnest 
or  a  very  active  interest  in  the  subject.  When  Gar 
rison  was  in  jail  in  Baltimore,  he  was  in  college  at 
Cambridge.  And  during  the  next  few  years  he  lived, 
moved,  and  had  his  being  almost  wholly  in  the  bright 
and  stately  world  of  books,  far  away  from  the  mad 
ding  crowd  of  public  issues,  engrossed  in  his  profes 
sion  and  the  companionship  of  scholars  and  thinkers. 
But  in  1835,  probably  directly  after  the  great  mob  in 
Boston,  which  dragged  Garrison  through  its  streets, 
he  became  a  subscriber  to  the  Liberator.  His  father 
was  the  sheriff  of  the  county  of  Suffolk  at  the  time, 
and  strove  manfully  to  rescue  the  anti-slavery  leader 
from  the  murderous  violence  of  the  rioters.  The  son's 
subscription  to  the  Liberator  was,  doubtless,  intended 
to  express  his  decided  disapprobation  of  the  mob 
spirit,  and  his  disposition  to  resist  its  encroachments 
in  the  interest  of  slavery  upon  the  liberties  and  insti 
tutions  of  the  North. 

A  year  later,  the  reader  will  recall  how  hotly  he 
resented  the  indignity  received  by  Samuel  E.  Sewall 
at  the  hands  af  a  baffled  slave-catcher,  and  with  what 
indignation  he  wrote  his  law  partner,  George  S.  Hil- 


I2O  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

lard,  from  Paris,  in  relation  to  the  tameness  with 
which  the  Northern  members  of  Congress  allowed 
themselves  to  be  bullied  by  Southern  representatives, 
and  how  rather  than  submit  to  it  he  was  ready  to 
dissolve  the  Union.  A  month  before  he  sailed  for 
Europe  the  frightful  period  of  anti-slavery  mobs  had 
culminated  in  the  murder  of  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy  in 
the  far  away  town  of  Alton  in  Illinois.  Falling  as 
Lovejoy  did,  a  martyr  to  free  speech  and  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  the  tidings  of  his  assassination  thrilled 
wherever  they  traveled  the  free  States  with  horror, 
aroused  in  them  the  keenest  apprehensions-  touching 
the  safety  of  those  safeguards  of  their  liberties.  The 
news  of  the  tragedy  reached  Boston  three  weeks  be 
fore  Sumner  sailed  for  Europe.  He  was  in  the  midst 
of  preparations  to  this  end,  and  so  it  is  impossible  to 
say  how  much  of  his  attention  it  was  able  to  draw  to 
itself.  Some, without  doubt;  but  probably  not  as  much 
as  its  importance  merited.  It  would  seem  from  one 
of  his  letters  while  abroad  that  he  was  unacquainted 
with  the  details  of  the  story.  And  this  is  not  surpris 
ing,  seeing  that  on  the  very  day  (December  8,  1837) 
on  which  he  left  the  country,  occurred  the  great  meet 
ing  in  Boston  called  to  denounce  the  crime,  at  which 
his  friend  Dr.  Channing,  his  law-partner,  Mr.  Hillard, 
and  his  classmate  in  the  law-school,  Wendell  Phillips, 
took  leading  parts. 

There  was  a  decided  change  in  this  respect  almost 
immediatly  after  his  return  to  the  country  in  the 
spring  of  1840.  If  there  were  other  questions  agitat 
ing  the  public  mind  then,  it  did  not  take  the  young 
scholar  long  to  perceive  that  the  slavery  question  was 
of  paramount  interest  in  Congress  and  in  the  country 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  121 

at  large.  More  and  more  it  was  sucking  into  its  vast 
vortex  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  free  as  of  the 
slave  States.  And  no  wonder,  for  the  slave-power 
during  this  time  was  never  more  active  and  aggres 
sive.  One  had  but  to  look  around  on  the  everyday 
occurrences  of  the  Republic  to  witness  the  facts  of  its 
fell  and  determined  purpose  to  extend  itself  in  the 
nation,  to  entrench  itself  in  the  Government,  to  build 
high  above  every  other,  the  Babel  of  its  heaven-de 
fying  pretensions,  in  the  Union. 

While  England  was  struggling  to  abolish  the  Afri 
can  slave-trade,  America,  dominated  by  the  slave- 
power,  was  throwing  her  international  influence  on 
the  other  side,  opposing  with  an  energy  and  persis 
tency,  worthy  of  a  better  cause,  the  sublime  efforts  of 
English  philanthropy  and  statesmanship  to  rid  the 
world  of  that  terrific  scourge  of  the  natives  of  Africa. 
In  1841,  Great  Britain  attempted  to  enlist  by  treaty, 
the  cooperation  of  the  Great  Powers  of  Europe  toward 
its  abolition.  Four  of  these  Powers,  viz.,  Great  Britian, 
Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia  declared  the  trade  piracy, 
and  granted  to  each  other  a  mutual  right  of  search, 
for  the  more  effective  suppression  of  the  traffic.  The 
final  refusal  of  France  to  do  as  much  was  largely 
owing  to  the  active  opposition  of  America  through 
its  diplomatic  representatives  at  Paris  and  Berlin, 
General  Cass,  and  Henry  Wheaton,  so  completely  sub 
servient  had  the  Federal  Government  become  to  the 
slave-power.  And  when  England,  in  the  determined 
pursuit  of  her  mighty  purpose  to  put  an  end  to  the  in 
human  traffic,  asserted  the  right  of  inquiry  as  to  the 
real  character  of  suspicious  vessels  sailing  under  the 
American  flag  on  the  African  coast,  the  whole  weight 


122  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

of  the  State  Department  of  the  "  land  of  the  free,  and 
the  home  of  the  brave,"  was  thrown,  in  the  interest  of 
Southern  slavery,  against  the  English  contention. 

It  was  then,  perhaps,  that  Sumner  made  his  first 
essay,  after  his  return  home,  against  the  Lernaean 
hydra,  by  maintaining  in  two  able  and  learned  arti 
cles,  the  soundness  of  the  English  position  of  the  right 
of  inquiry  on  the  coast  of  Africa.  These  articles 
appeared  in  the  Boston  Advertiser  in  the  winter  of 
1842,  and  received  the  unqualified  indorsement  of  such 
jurists  as  Story  and  Kent.  The  latter  considered  them 
"  as  entirely  sound,  logical,  and  conclusive,"  while 
Judge  Story  declared  that  the  second  of  the  articles 
was  written  "  with  the  comprehensive  grasp  of  a  pub 
licist  dealing  with  the  general  law  of  nations,  and  not 
with  the  municipal  doctrines  of  a  particular  country." 

Hardly  less  heinous  than  the  African  slave-trade, 
was  the  coastwise  slave-trade  of  the  United  States. 
All  along  the  American  coast,  from  the  Chesapeake 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  this  nefarious  traffic  in  men, 
women,  and  children,  was  pursued  under  the  Amer 
ican  colors  and  the  protection  of  the  National  Govern 
ment.  Of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  human  cargoes 
thus  transported,  occasionally  one  would  come  to 
grief,  for  the  traders,  but  joy  for  the  slaves.  Sev 
eral  times  were  slavers  stranded  in  the  channel  be 
tween  Florida  and  the  Bahama  Islands,  the  vessels 
towed  into  a  British  port,  and  the  slaves  liberated  by 
the  genius  of  universal  emancipation.  Between  the 
years  1830  and  1835,  three  such  cases  occurred  in  that 
long  and  difficult  channel.  Naturally  enough  the 
owners  of  the  slaves  were  furious  at  the  loss  of  their 
property,  and,  as  the  coastwise  slave-trade  was  imper- 


HERCULES   TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  123 

iled  by  the  proximity  of  the  genius  of  universal 
emancipation  the  whole  South  was  no  less  furious. 
The  General  Government  took  the  matter  up  and  made 
it  the  subject  of  diplomatic  correspondence  between 
it  and  Great  Britain,  demanding  for  the  owners  pay 
ment  for  the  slaves  so  lost.  Great  Britain  did  even 
tually  allow  the  claims  upon  two  of  the  vessels, 
stranded  on  the  Bahama  reefs  and  towed  into  Nas 
sau  prior  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  her  West 
Indian  possessions,  but  for  a  third  vessel  which  put 
into  Port  Hamilton  after  that  act  she  finally  refused  to 
pay,  on  the  principle  that  slavery  could  not  exist 
where  her  law  existed.  After  the  emancipation 
of  slavery  in  the  British  West  Indies,  the  air  in  them 
became  too  pure  for  a  slave  to  breathe.  Whereat  the 
slave-power  took  great  offense.  "  The  principle  set 
up  by  the  British  Government,"  Mr.  Calhoun  con 
tended,  "  if  carried  out  to  its  fullest  extent,  would  dp 
much  to  close  this  all-important  channel,  by  render 
ing  it  too  hazardous  for  use.  She  has  only  to  give 
an  indefinite  extent  to  the  principle  applied  to  the 
case  of  the  *  Enterprise  '  and  the  work  would  be  done; 
and  why  has  she  not  as  good  a  right  to  apply  this 
principle  to  a  cargo  of  sugar  and  cotton  as  to  the 
slaves  that  produce  it  ?" 

But  the  Southern  excitement,  aroused  by  the  case 
of  the  "Enterprise,"  was  comparatively  a  slight  affair 
to  that  caused  by  the  case  of  the  "  Creole."  It  seems 
that  the  brig  "  Creole  "  sailed  from  Norfolk,  Va., 
for  New  Orleans,  with  a  cargo  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  slaves,  in  the  autumn  of  1841.  When  near 
the  Bahama  Islands,  nineteen  of  the  human  merchan 
dise,  under  the  lead  of  one  of  themselves,  Madison 


124  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Washington,  attacked  and  overpowered  the  officers 
and  crew,  and  compelled  the  captain,  who  was 
wounded  in  the  fight,  on  pain  of  instant  death,  to 
take  the  vessel  into  Nassau.  This  was  done,  and  in 
due  time  all  of  the  slaves  were,  except  the  "  nine 
teen,"  liberated,  and  the  liberation  of  these  followed 
subsequently  upon  the  receipt  of  instructions  from  the 
English  Foreign  Office,  in  London,  by  the  authorities 
on  the  island. 

In  the  struggle  on  the  "  Creole"  between  the  nine 
teen  slaves  and  the  crew,  one  of  the  passengers,  a 
slave-trader,  was  killed,  and  the  captain,  first  mate, 
and  ten  of  the  crew  were  wounded.  The  nineteen 
conspirators  acted  with  singular  moderation.  What 
they  did,  they  had  plainly  done  only  to  obtain  their 
freedom.  The  lives  of  all  the  whites  on  board  were 
spared,  after  the  capture  of  the  brig,  and  there  was 
no  disposition  manifested  to  interfere  unduly  with 
the  property  or  persons  of  their  prisoners.  But  for 
all  that  the  South  set  up  at  once  the  cry  of  "  mutiny 
and  murder  on  the  high  seas,"  and  this  cry  was  im 
mediately  echoed  by  its  mouthpiece  the  National  Gov 
ernment,  through  Daniel  Webster,  then  Secretary  of 
State.  To  Mr.  Calhoun  the  administration  did  not 
display  sufficient  alacrity  in  looking  after  the  prop 
erty  interests  of  its  Southern  masters  :  "  He  had  not 
doubted  but  that  a  vessel  had  been  dispatched,  or 
some  early  opportunity  seized  for  transmitting  direc 
tions  to  our  Minister  at  the  Court  of  St.  James,  to  de 
mand  that  the  criminals  should  be  delivered  to  our 
Government  for  trial  ;  more  especially,  as  they  were 
detained  with  the  view  of  abiding  the  decision  of  the 
Government  at  home.  But  in  all  this  he  had  been  in 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  125 

a  mistake.  Not  a  step  has  been  yet  taken — no  de 
mand  made  for  the  surrender  of  the  murderers,  though 
the  executive  must  have  been  in  full  possession  of  the 
facts  for  more  than  a  month."  This  was  by  way  of 
snapper  to  his  whip,  of  which  he  was  giving  the 
Northern  Secretary  of  State  a  premonitory  taste. 
Then  the  slave-champion  proceeded  to  argument. 
He  did  not  doubt  that "  this  was  mutiny  and  murder, 
committed  on  the  ocean,  on  board  of  one  of  our  ves 
sels,  sailing  from  one  of  our  ports  to  another  on  our 
own  coast,  in  a  regular  voyage,  committed  by  slaves 
who  constituted  a  part  of  the  cargo,  and  forcing  the 
officers  and  crew  to  steer  the  vessel  into  a  port  of  a 
friendly  Power.  Now  there  was  nothing  more  clear 
than  that,  according  to  the  laws  of  nations,  a  vessel 
on  the  ocean  is  regarded  as  a  portion  of  the  territory 
of  the  State  to  which  she  belongs,  and  more  empha 
tically  so,  if  possible,  in  a  coasting  voyage  ;  and  that, 
if  forced  into  a  friendly  port  by  an  unavoidable  neces 
sity,  she  loses  none  of  the  rights  that  belong  to  her 
on  the  ocean." 

When  the  ponderous  brain  of  the  orator  of  the  two- 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims 
at  Plymouth,  did,  however,  take  up  the  subject,  "  the 
apparent  indifference  "  to  the  slave  interests  of  the 
glorious  Union,  which  Calhoun  professed  to  discern 
in  the  Premier's  long  delay  in  demanding  "  that  the 
criminals  should  be  delivered  to  our  Government  for 
trial,"  was  speedily  and  altogether  dissipated  by  the 
pro-slavery  character  of  the  dispatch  sent  by  him  to 
Edward  Everett,  then  our  minister  to  Great  Britain. 
And,  by  the  way,  the  Secretary  could  not  have  possibly 
selected  a  more  thoroughly  loyal  representative  of 


126  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  slave-power  than  was  this  same  Edward  Everett, 
who  once  unblushingly  declared  on  the  floor  of  Con 
gress  that  though  a  scholar  and  no  soldier,  "  there  is 
no  cause  in  which  I  would  sooner  buckle  a  knapsack 
on  my  back  and  put  a  musket  on  my  shoulder  than 
that  of  putting  down  a  servile  insurrection  at  the 
South." 

"  The  British  Government  cannot  but  see  that  this 
case  as  presented  in  these  papers,"  so  ran  Mr.  Web 
ster's  dispatch  to  Mr.  Everett,  "  is  one  calling  loudly  for 
redress."  For  the  "  Creole  "  was  "  lawfully  engaged 
in  passing  from  port  to  port  in  the  United  States. 
By  violence  and  crime  she  was  carried  against  the 
master's  will,  out  of  her  course,  into  the  port  of  a 
friendly  Power.  All  was  the  result  of  force.  Cer 
tainly,  ordinary  comity  and  hospitality  entitled  him 
to  such  assistance  from  the  authorities  of  the  place  as 
should  enable  him  to  resume  and  prosecute  his  voy 
age  and  bring  the  offenders  to  justice.  But,  instead 
of  this,  if  the  facts  be  as  represented  in  these  papers, 
not  only  did  the  authorities  give  no  aid  for  any  such 
purpose,  but  they  did  actually  interfere  to  set  free  the 
slaves,  and  to  enable  them  to  disperse  themselves 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  master  of  the  vessel  or  their 
owners.  A  proceeding  like  this  cannot  but  cause 
deep  feeling  in  the  United  States."  The  letter  left 
nothing  unsaid,  with  which  even  an  exacting  slave- 
champion  like  Calhoun  was  able  to  find  fault.  On 
the  contrary,  it  gave  him  keen  satisfaction  and  elicited 
his  admiration  and  approval,  as  covering  "  the  ground 
which  had  been  assumed  on  this  subject  by  all  parties 
in  the  Senate  "  with  great  ability. 

But  if  Webster  and  Everett  were  disposed  to  range 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  127 

themselves,  as  servitors  of  slavery  in  respect  of  this 
case,  their  young  compatriot,  Sumner,  was  not  at  all 
so  inclined.  He  took  remarkable  interest  in  the  sub 
ject,  and  traversed  earnestly  and  ably  the  pro-slavery 
positions  of  the  former's  letter,  which  evoked  Cal- 
houn's  admiration  and  approval.  "  In  the  first  place," 
he  wrote  Jacob  Harvey,  "  England  cannot  deliver  up 
the  slaves  who  are  not  implicated  in  the  mutiny  and 
murder  by  which  the  government  of  the  ship  was 
overthrown.  She  has  laid  down  a  rule  not  to  recog 
nize  property  in  human  beings  since  the  date  of  her 
great  Emancipation  Act.  The  principle  of  this  is 
very  clear.  She  will  not  in  any  way  lend  her  machin 
ery  of  justice  to  execute  foreign  lawrs  which  she  has 
pronounced  immoral,  unchristian,  and  unjust.  It  is 
common  learning  among  jurists,  that  no  nation  will 
enforce  contracts  or  obligations  of  an  immoral  char 
acter,  even  though  not  regarded  as  immoral  in  the 
country  where  they  were  entered  into.  .  .  . 

"  Next,  as  to  the  slaves,  participators  in  the  mutiny 
and  murder.  Their  case  is  not  so  clear  as  that  of  the 
others  ;  but,  nevertheless,  sufficiently  clear  to  enable 
us  to  see  the  way  of  settlement.  And,  first,  I  am 
inclined  to  believe — indeed,  I  entertain  scarcely  a 
doubt — that  they  became  freemen  when  taken,  by 
the  voluntary  act  of  their  owners,  beyond  the  juris 
diction  of  the  slave  States.  Slavery  is  not  a  national 
institution  ;  nor  is  it  one  recognized  by  the  law  of 
nations.  It  is  peculiar  to  certain  States.  It  draws 
its  vitality  from  the  legislation  of  those  States.  Now, 
this  legislation  is,  of  course,  limited  to  those  States. 
It  is  not  extra-territorial  in  its  influence.  Our  New 
England  courts  have  decided  that  a  slave  coming  to 


128  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

our  soil  by  the  consent  of  his  master — as,  for  instance, 
a  servant — becomes  entitled  to  his  freedom.  The  in 
vigorating  principle  of  the  common  law  manumits 
him.  It  is  not  so,  however,  with  a  fugitive  slave. 
And  why  ?  Because  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  has  provided  for  his  surrender  ;  but  the  case 
of  a  fugitive  slave  is  the  only  one  provided  for.  The 
courtier  of  Queen  Elizabeth  said  that  the  air  of  Eng 
land  was  too  pure  for  a  slave  to  breathe  in.  I  will 
say  that  the  air  of  the  ocean  is  too  pure  for  slavery. 
There  is  the  principle  of  manumission  in  its  strong 
breezes,  at  least  when  the  slave  is  carried  there 
by  the  voluntary  act  of  his  owner.  If  I  am 
correct  in  this  view,  these  slaves  were  remitted  to 
their  natural  rights.  They  were  justified  in  over 
throwing  by  force  (not  mutinous  or  murderous,  be 
cause  justifiable)  any  power  which  deprived  them  of 
their  liberty.  In  doing  what  they  did,  therefore,  they 
have  not  been  guilty  of  any  crime.  They  are  in  the 
same  situation  with  the  others  who  did  not  par 
ticipate  in  the  alleged  murder. 

"  But,  in  the  next  place,  suppose  we  are  wrong  in 
this  view  ;  suppose  they  were  not  justified  in  rising, 
as  they  did  ;  suppose,  in  short,  that  they  have  com 
mitted  the  crime  of  murder  under  our  laws  ;  still,  I 
say,  England  will  not  be  obliged  to  give  them  up. 
The  crime  will  be  piracy  by  statute,  and  not  by 
the  law  of  nations.  Now,  it  is  perfectly  clear  by  the 
law  of  nations — and  no  nation  has  acted  upon  this 
rule  more  than  the  United  States — that  no  govern 
ment  can  be  called  upon  to  surrender  persons  who 
have  offended  against  the  municipal  laws  of  another 
government.  It  is,  of  course,  within  the  discretion 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  I2Q 

of  a  government  to  surrender  such  offenders,  but  it 
is  no  just  cause  of  complaint  that  a  government 
refuses  to  exercise  this  discretion.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  England  will  refuse  to  exercise  it." 

Webster's  dispatch  was  one  of  the  first  proofs  of 
his  consent  to  wear  the  collar  of  the  slave-power  in 
his  uncurbed  and  insane  ambition  to  be  President. 
It  gave  Sumner  great  offense,  and  he  was  sternly  out 
spoken  against  its  sophistry  and  its  "  paltry,  un 
certain,  shifting  principles."  Indeed,  so  marked  was 
his  condemnation  of  the  letter  of  the  Secretary,  that 
to  George  Ticknor  he  seemed  the  only  person  met  by 
him  who  disagreed  strongly  with  it.  But  for  all 
that,  Sumner  was  not  the  only  person  who  was 
vehement  against  it.  Many  others  were  vehement 
against  it  likewise,  and  among  these  was  Dr.  W.  E. 
Channing,  with  whom  Sumner  was  on  terms  of  inti 
macy.  The  doctor  felt  so  warmly  on  the  subject 
that  he  published  a  pamphlet  in  reply  to  Mr. 
Webster's  pro-slavery  dispatch.  Sumner  took  the 
most  lively  interest  in  the  pamphlet,  which  the 
author  read  to  him  in  manuscript,  and  submitted 
later,  when  set  up  in  press,  the  proofs  of  it  for  his 
critical  assistance  and  suggestions.  The  young 
scholar  rejoiced  that  "  such  a  voice  was  to  be  heard 
in  the  country,  and  to  cross  the  sea."  To  his  brother 
George  he  wrote  on  All  Fools  Day  of  1842:  "Dr. 
Channing  has  put  forth  a  glorious  pamphlet  on  the 
'Creole, 'in  reply  to  Webster's  sophistical  dispatch. 
One  feels  proud  of  being  a  countryman  of  Channing. 
His  spirit  is  wurthy  of  the  Republic,  and  does  us 
honor  abroad.  His  is  a  noble  elevation,  which  makes 
the  pulses  throb."  Over  against  this  " noble  eleva- 
9 


130  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tion  "  was  seen  Webster's  sensibly  diminishing  moral 
stature,  when,  if  ever  a  man  had  the  making  of  a 
God  within  him,  it  was  he  before  he  had  indentured 
his  great  intellect  to  the  service  of  slavery  and  self. 

Writing  to  his  brother  George  in  the  autumn  of 
the  same  year,  he  contrasts  Webster  and  Channing 
thus  :  "  Who  excels,  who  equals  Webster  in  intellect  ? 
I  mean  in  the  mere  dead  weight  of  intellect.  With 
the  moral  elevation  of  Channing,  he  would  become  a 
prophet.  Webster  wants  sympathy  with  the  mass, 
with  humanity,  with  truth.  If  this  had  been  living 
within  him,  he  never  could  have  written  his  *  Creole  ' 
letter.  Without  Webster's  massive  argumentation, 
Channing  sways  the  world  with  a  stronger  influence. 
Thanks  to  God,  who  has  made  the  hearts  of  men 
respond  to  what  is  elevated,  noble,  and  true  !  Whose 
position  would  you  prefer — that  of  Webster  or  Chan 
ning  ?  I  know  the  latter  intimately,  and  my  admi 
ration  of  him  grows  constantly.  When  I  was  younger 
than  I  am  now,  I  was  presumptuous  enough  to  ques 
tion  his  power.  I  did  not  find  in  him  the  forms  of 
logical  discussion,  and  the  close,  continuous  chain  of 
reasoning,  and  I  complained.  I  am  glad  that  I  am 
wise  enough  to  see  him  in  a  different  light.  His 
moral  nature  is  powerful,  and  he  writes  under  the 
strong  instinct  which  this  supplies  ;  and  the  appeal 
is  felt  by  the  world." 

Sumner,  doubtless,  little  dreamt  that  he  himself 
possessed  that  very  quality  which  Webster  wanted, 
and  which  was  to  make  him  what  that  great  man  for 
lack  of  it  could  not  be — a  prophet.  But  of  himself, 
as  having  a  leading  part  to  play  in  the  politics  of 
the  country,  he  thought  not  in  those  days.  He  was 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  13! 

aware  of  but  one  thing  then — the  increasing  power 
of  slavery,  and  in  himself  of  an  increasing  hatred  of 
that  power.  It  was  more  and  more  becoming  in 
tolerable  to  his  freedom-loving  spirit.  "The  question 
of  slavery  is  getting  to  be  the  absorbing  one  among 
us,"  he  wrote  his  brother  ;  l<  and  growing  out  of  this 
is  tnat  other  of  the  Union.  People  now  talK  about 
the  value  of  the  Union,  and  the  North  has  begun  to 
return  the  taunts  of  the  South."  And  herein  again 
was  he  the  opposite  of  Webster,  to  whom  the 
"  glorious  Union  "  was  the  Be-all  and  the  End-all,  and 
for  whose  preservation  he  was  disposed  to  make  any 
sacrifice  of  the  claims  of  freedom  and  humanity.  To 
Sumner,  on  the  other  hand,  the  value  of  a  Union, 
dominated  by  the  slave-power,  did  not  appear  so 
priceless.  There  were  some  things  upon  which  he 
placed  a  higher  value  and  which  he  would  not  pay  to 
preserve  it.  And  these  were  his  own  self-respect, 
and  the  self-respect  of  the  free  States,  together  with 
those  selfsame  claims  of  freedom  and  humanity, 
which  Webster  was  willing  to  offer  up  on  the  altar  of 
the  dear  Union. 

The  violent  scenes  in  Congress,  which  were  enact 
ing  at  this  time,  he  watched  with  boiling  blood  and 
blazing  eyes.  John  Quincy  Adams  was  making  his 
never-to-be-forgotten  fight  for  the  right  of  petition, 
under  the  very  paws,  within  the  very  jaws  of  the 
slave-power.  Whoever  else  of  the  Northern  Repre 
sentatives  chose  to  wear  the  collar  of  the  national 
tyranny,  to  cringe  and  crawl  bet\veen  its  cruel  limbs, 
to  grow  pliant  and  submissive  under  its  brutal  blows, 
not  so  did  John  Quincy  Adams  choose.  Threats  he 
answered  with  defiance,  blow  with  blow,  beating 


I32  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

back  and  beating  down  with  the  iron  flail  of  magnifi 
cent  powers  the  rage  of  his  foes.  The  brave  old 
Spartan  planted  himself  in  this  pass  of  freedom,  this 
Thermopylae  of  the  free  States,  and  withstood  for 
almost  a  dozen  years  the  Persian  flood  of  the  slave 
despotism  in  Congress. 

It  made  no  difference  to  the  veteran  statesman  what 
the  prayer  of  the  petition  was,  or  from  whom  emanat 
ing,  whether  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  or  against  its 
abolition,  or  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  whether 
from  slaves  or  freemen,  it  was  all  the  same,  if  for 
warded  to  him,  he  presented  it  unterrified  by  the 
tempest  which  its  presentation  aroused  about  his 
head.  The  right  he  held  sacred,  inviolable,  God- 
given,  to  be  maintained  regardless  of  cost  and  under 
all  circumstances. 

In  the  winter  of  1842,  the  heroic  old  man,  true  to 
his  principles  and  purposes,  presented  a  petition, 
signed  by  Benjamin  Emerson  and  forty-five  other 
citizens  of  Haverhill,  Mass.,  praying  for  the 
immediate  adoption  of  measures  for  the  peaceable 
dissolution  of  the  Union.  This  brave  act  brought  the 
slave-holding  hornets  in  swarms  about  his  devoted 
head.  A  resolution  of  censure  was  introduced  in  the 
House  against  him,  and  supported  by  the  most  pas 
sionate  strains  of  Southern  eloquence.  But,  single- 
handed,  Adams  met  and  threw  back  the  flood.  In 
close,  hand-to-hand  encounters  he  has,  perhaps,  never 
been  equaled  in  our  parliamentary  history,  certainly 
never  surpassed.  Quick  and  ferocious  in  thrust  and 
retort,  he  was  the  terror  of  the  South  in  debate.  He 
was  so  now,  driving  home  with  savage  strength 
tomahawk  and  knife  into  the  foes  who  ventured 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  133 

within  reach  of  either,  until,  baffled  and  defeated, 
they  slunk  back  with  their  resolution  of  censure, 
leaving  the  venerable  ex-President  in  the  possession 
of  his  position  overlooking  the  right  of  petition. 

Six  years  before,  the  slave-power  in  the  House, 
unable  to  bully  him  into  compliance  with  its  behests 
in  respect  of  anti-slavery  petitions,  had  adopted  its 
gag-rule:  "That  all  petitions,  memorials,  and  papers 
touching  the  abolition  of  slavery,  or  the  buying,  sell 
ing,  or  transferring  slaves,  in  any  State,  or  District,  or 
Territory  of  the  United  States,  be  laid  on  the  table 
without  being  debated,  printed,  read,  or  referred,  and 
that  no  action  be  taken  thereon."  In  the  interest  of 
slavery  thus  ruthlessly  were  the  right  of  petition, 
and  the  freedom  of  debate  of  the  North  struck  down 
in  the  Halls  of  Congress. 

Although  not  approving  entirely  of  Mr.  Adams's 
manners  in  debate,  Sumner  nevertheless  felt  for  the 
grand  old  champion  of  the  right  of  petition  the  most 
ardent  admiration  and  sympathy.  Writing  to  Dr. 
Lieber  at  Columbia,  S.  C.,  in  relation  to  the  attempt 
of  Southern  Congressmen  to  censure  Mr.  Adams  for 
presenting  the  Haverhill  petition  praying  for  the  dis 
solution  of  the  Union  the  young  jurist  said  :  "  I  still 
stick  to  Adams;  I  admire  the  courage  and  talent  he 
has  recently  displayed,  and  the  cause  in  which  they 
were  exerted.  I  object  most  strenuously  to  his  man 
ner,  to  some  of  his  expressions  and  topics,  as  unpar 
liamentary,  and  subversive  of  the  rules  and  orders  of 
debate.  These  are  among  the  great  safeguards  of 
liberty,  and  particularly  of  freedom  of  speech.  .  .  . 
One  of  the  worst  signs  at  Washington  is  the  sub 
version  of  these  rules.  No  personality  is  too  low  for 


154  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

that  House;  and  Mr.  Adams  erred  very  much  when 
he  spoke  of  the  puny  mind  of  the  gentleman  from 
Kentucky,  and  when  he  alluded  to  his  intemper 
ance.  .  . 

"  But  still  I  stick  to  Adams.  His  cause  was  grand. 
If  I  had  been  in  the  House,  I  should  have  been  proud 
to  fight  under  his  banner.  He  has  rallied  the  North 
against  the  South;  has  taught  them  their  rights,  and 
opened  their  eyes  to  the  'bullying'  (I  dislike  the 
word  as  much  as  the  thing)  of  the  South.  I  wish 
you  could  extricate  yourself  from  that  coil." 

It  was  exactly  as  Sumner  said,  no  personality  was 
too  low  for  that  House — the  Southern  portion  of  it. 
But  subsequent  Houses  did  not  stop  at  personalities, 
descended,  in  fact,  to  other  and  yet  more  brutal 
methods  of  debate.  Here  is  an  instance,  illustrative 
at  once  of  the  iniquitous  exactions  and  violence 
of  the  slave-power  in  the  Government:  Joshua  R. 
Giddings,  surpassed  only  by  the  "  old  man  eloquent," 
in  those  early  days  in  Congress  in  opposition  to  the 
arrogance  and  aggressions  of  the  South,  is  upon  his 
feet  in  the  House,  which  is  drawing  near  the  end  of 
its  session,  in  1845.  He  ls  rnaking  a  telling  expose 
of  the  selfishness  of  the  slave-power,  and  of  the  sub 
serviency  of  the  Government  to  its  interests,  citing  as 
an  example  of  the  truth  of  his  charge  the  case  of  the 
treaty  of  Indian  Spring,  by  which  the  Government  not 
only  paid  $109,000  to  the  slaveholders  of  Georgia  for 
slaves  who  had  escaped  to  Florida,  but  added  to  it 
the  further  sum  of  $141,000  as  compensation  for  "  the 
offspring  which  the  females  would  have  borne  to 
their  masters  had  they  remained  in  bondage."  Con 
gress  actually  paid  that  sum,  the  orator  stingingly 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  135 

observed,  "  for  children  who  were  never  born,  but 
who  might  have  been  if  their  parents  had  remained 
faithful  slaves." 

Upon  hearing  this  wretched  chapter  of  the  mis 
doings  of  the  slave-power  rehearsed,  Southern  mem 
bers  went  beside  themselves  with  rage  and  flung  fast 
and  furious  at  the  dauntless  Ohioan  coarse  and 
vituperative  replies.  E.  J.  Black,  a  member  from 
Georgia,  specially  signalized  himself  in  this  respect, 
to  whom  Giddings  made  a  scathing  retort.  There 
upon  there  occurred  this  extraordinary  scene  which 
is  taken  from  Wilson's  "  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave- 
Power  in  America":  "Mr.  Black,  approaching  Mr. 
Giddings  with  an  uplifted  cane,  said:  'If  you  repeat 
those  words  I  will  knock  you  down.'  The  latter 
repeating  them,  the  former  was  seized  by  his  friends 
and  borne  from  the  hall.  Mr.  Dawson,  of  Louisiana, 
who  on  a  previous  occasion  had  attempted  to  assault 
him,  approaching  him,  and,  cocking  his  pistol,  pro 
fanely  exclaimed:  '  I'll  shoot  him;  by  G — d  I'll  shoot 
him! '  At  the  same  moment,  Mr.  Causin,  of  Maryland, 
placed  himself  in  front  of  Mr.  Dawson,  with  his  right 
hand  upon  his  weapon  concealed  in  his  bosom.  At 
this  juncture,  four  members  from  the  Democratic  side 
took  their  position  by  the  side  of  the  member  from 
Louisiana,  each  man  putting  his  hand  in  his  pocket 
and  apparently  grasping  his  weapon.  At  the  same 
moment  Mr.  Raynor,  of  North  Carolina,  Mr.  Hudson, 
of  Massachusetts,  and  Mr.  Foot,  of  Vermont,  came  to 
Mr.  Giddings's  rescue,  who,  thus  confronted  and  thus 
supported,  continued  his  speech.  Dawson  stood 
fronting  him  till  its  close,  and  Causin  remained  facing 
the  latter  until  he  returned  to  the  Democratic  side." 


136  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

It  was  such  plantation  manners  and  outrageous 
excesses  of  the  South  in  Congress,  which  were  for 
cing  people  like  Sumner  to  think  and  talk  more  and 
more  of  the  value  of  Webster's  "glorious  Union"  of 
Northern  freemen  with  Southern  slaveholders. 

Sumner  heartily  approved  of  the  anti-slavery  resolu 
tions  offered  by  Mr.  Giddings  in  the  House,  asserting 
the  freedom  of  the  slaves  on  board  the  "Creole  "  under 
the  Constitution,  and  for  which  he  received  the  censure 
of  the  House.  "  Thank  God  !  "  exclaimed  the  young 
jurist  in  this  connection,  "  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  does  not  recognize  men  as  property.  It 
speaks  of  slaves  as  persons.  Slavery  is  a  local  institu 
tion,  drawing  its  vitality  from  State  laws  ;  therefore, 
when  the  slaveowner  voluntarily  takes  his  slave 
beyond  the  sphere  of  the  State  laws,  he  manumits 
him.  .  .  .  But  suppose  it  were  not  true  in  point  of 
Constitutional  law,  still  Mr.  Giddings  had  a  perfect 
right  to  assert  it  ;  and  the  slaveholders  in  voting  to 
censure  him,  have  sowed  the  wind.  I  fear  the  reap 
ing  of  the  whirlwind." 

Another  aspect  of  the  subject  of  slavery,  Sumner 
had  occasion  to  think  and  write  upon  in  the  winter 
of  1843.  During  the  visit  of  his  friend,  Lord  Mor- 
peth,  to  the  United  States  in  1842,  Mrs.  Maria  Weston 
Chapman  requested  of  him  a  contribution  to  The 
Liberty  Bell,  the  little  paper  published  by  her  every 
year  as  a  sort  of  souvenir  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Fair  of 
which  she  was,  on  the  authority  of  James  Russell 
Lowell,  "the  coiled-up  mainspring."  Lord  Morpeth 
declined  to  discuss  the  question  of  American  slavery 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  foreigner.  Whereupon 
the  Advertiser  undertook  to  read  Massachusetts  a  lee- 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  137 

ture  on  the  impropriety  of  her  citizens  doing  what 
the  British  nobleman's  foreign  citizenship  had  with 
held  him  from  tampering  with.  Sumner  took  the 
matter  up  and  replied,  in  a  cogent  article,  to  the  con 
tention  of  that  paper  :  "  First,  that  the  opponents  of 
slavery  in  the  free  States  direct  their  exertions 
politically  against  this  institution  in  States  to  which 
they  are  foreigners  ;  and,  second,  that  slavery  is  not 
an  evil  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  free  States,  or 
of  the  United  States,  of  which  the  free  States  are  a 
part."  Both  of  these  assumptions,  Sumner  vigor 
ously  attacked,  and  thoroughly  exposed  the  fallacies 
upon  which  they  rested  : 

"  The  opponents  of  slavery  in  the  free  States  recog 
nized  the  right  of  all  States  to  establish,"  he  main 
tained,  "within  their  own  borders,  such  institutions 
as  they  please  ;  and  they  do  not  seek,  either  through 
their  own  Legislatures  or  through  Congress,  to  touch 
slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists.  But  while  they 
abstain  from  all  political  action  on  these  States,  they 
do  not  feel  called  upon  to  suppress  their  sympathy 
for  the  suffering  slave,  nor  their  detestation  of  the 
system  which  makes  him  a  victim.  To  do  this  would 
be  untrue  to  the  precepts  of  our  religion,  and  to  the 
best  instincts  of  our  nature."  Then  he  disposes  of 
the  second  assumption  by  pointing  out  particular 
cases  to  the  number  of  nine,  such  as  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  in  the  national  Territories,  in 
the  trade  between  the  States,  on  the  high  seas  under 
the  national  colors,  in  the  national  Constitution,  etc., 
etc.,  wherein  the  evil  was  "  distinctly  within  the  juris 
diction  of  the  United  States,  of  which  the  free  States 
are  a  part." 


138  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

"  After  this  survey,"  he  concludes,  "it  will  be  diffi 
cult  to  see  how  it  can  be  said  that  the  people  of  the 
free  States  are  foreigners,  so  far  as  slavery  is  con 
cerned;  or  that  they  are  laboring  to  produce  an  effect, 
without  the  shadow  of  right  to  interfere.  On  the 
contrary,  the  subject  is  in  many  respects  directly 
within  their  jurisdiction.  Upon  the  North  as  upon 
the  South,  rests  the  sin  of  sustaining  it.  The  Supreme 
Court  of  Massachusetts,  in  an  elaborate  judgment, 
has  pronounced  it  contrary  to  the  law  of  nature.  The 
denunciations  of  the  first  moralist  of  the  age,  and  the 
pictures  of  one  of  the  first  poets  of  the  age,  have 
marked  it  with  the  brand  of  shame.  More  than  these; 
the  conscience  of  every  right-minded  man  proclaims 
that  it  is  contrary  to  the  golden  rule  of  justice.  How, 
then,  can  we  sustain  it?" 

Among  the  instances  enumerated  by  Sumner,  in 
which  the  free  States  stood  in  intimate  domestic  rela 
tions  to  Southern  slavery,  were  the  "  laws  of  slave 
States  affecting  the  liberty  of  free  colored  persons, 
citizens  of  and  coming  from,  Northern  States."  These 
laws,  in  two  States  in  particular,  viz.,  South  Carolina 
and  Louisiana,  were  flagrant  violations  of  the  Consti 
tutional  provision  guaranteeing  that,  "  The  citizens 
of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all  privileges  and 
immunities  of  citizens  in  the  several  States."  The 
nullification  of  the  Constitution  in  that  regard  operated 
with  peculiar  hardship  in  the  case  of  Massachusetts 
and  of  her  colored  citizens,  many  of  whom  formed 
a  part  of  her  merchant  marine  service,  and  who  in  the 
regular  course  of  trade  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  had 
occasion  to  enter  with  their  vessels  at  Charleston  and 
New  Orleans  to  discharge  and  receive  cargoes.  But 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  139 

the  moment  that  ships  having  colored  seamen  on  them 
entered  at  those  ports,  they  were  immediately  boarded 
by  the  local  police  who  seized  and  carried  off  all  of 
the  colored  servants  and  locked  them  up  in  work 
houses  and  jails  until  their  vessels  were  ready  to  sail, 
when  they  were  released  and  allowed  to  rejoin  them. 
Thus  were  Massachusetts  merchants  and  shipowners 
deprived  by  the  laws  of  sister  States  of  labor  which 
legally  belonged  to  them,  and  Massachusetts  colored 
citizens  of  rights  and  immunities  guaranteed  to  them 
by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Such  gross  wrongs  and  outrages  Massachusetts  was 
not  at  all  inclined  to  endure  meekly  and  non-resist- 
antly,  for  the  sake  even  of  the  dear  Union.  She  loudly 
protested  against  them,  and  through  her  representa 
tives  in  Congress  brought  them  to  the  notice  of  that 
body.  A  committee  of  the  House  investigated  the 
subject,  and  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  a  member  of  it  made 
an  able  report  in  which  he  "  put  the  argument  of  the 
Northern  States,''  according  to  Sumner,  "  with  unan 
swerable  force  and  distinctness."  Nothing  however 
was  done  by  Congress  to  redress  the  grievances  of  the 
Northern  States,  or  to  vindicate  the  national  compact, 
as  the  supreme  law  of  the  land.  Massachusetts'  mer 
chants  and  colored  seamen  continued  to  be  deprived 
in  Southern  ports  of  privileges  and  immunities 
guaranteed  to  them  by  the  Constitution  of  the 
country. 

When  Massachusetts  at  length  became  convinced 
that  she  could  get  neither  from  Congress  nor  from 
the  South  redress  of  her  wrongs,  she  determined,  as 
a  last  resort,  to  despatch  agents  to  Charleston  and 
New  Orleans  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  her  citizens 


140  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

against  the  violations  of  their  rights  in  those  cities. 
These  agents  were  instructed  to  obtain  and  transmit 
facts  in  relation  to  the  imprisonment  of  her  colored 
seamen,  and  to  test  by  one  or  more  actions  the  legality 
of  the  local  laws  by  which  they  were  distrained  of 
their  liberty. 

It  was  in  the  year  1844  that,  in  pursuance  of  her 
resolution,  Massachusetts  sent  Samuel  Hoar  and 
Henry  Hubbard  on  this  mission  into  South  Carolina 
and  Louisiana,  the  former  to  reside  at  Charleston, 
and  the  latter  at  New  Orleans.  But  no  sooner  had 
these  worthy  gentlemen  arrived  at  the  end  of  their 
respective  destinations,  and  communicated  to  the 
proper  authorities  their  official  characters  and  objects, 
than  they  found  themselves  the  recipients  of  atten 
tions,  which,  in  sooth,  they  had  not  counted  upon 
receiving  at  the  hands  of  the  people  among  whom 
they  were  commissioned  to  reside.  Judge  Lynch, 
they  were  not  long  in  discovering,  exercised  in 
Charleston  and  in  New  Orleans  original  and  appel 
late  jurisdiction  in  all  matters  relating  to  slavery,  and 
to  such  accredited  agents  or  "  emissaries  "  as  were 
themselves.  A  decree  of  this  puissant  functionary 
they  presently  saw  was  the  supreme  law  of  the  land 
in  which  they  were  appointed  to  dwell.  They  had 
supposed,  notwithstanding  sundry  suspicious  circum 
stances  and  occurrences  to  the  contrary,  that  the 
Constitution  enjoyed  this  dizzy  distinction  and  emi 
nence.  But  that,  alas!  was  an  illusion  which  their 
experiences  rudely  and  abruptly  dispelled.  They 
were  made  aware  in  ways  not  to  be  mistaken  that 
their  society  was  not  wanted,  and  that  the  sooner 
they  took  themselves  out  of  the  cities  where  they  were 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  141 

appointed  to  reside,  the  greater  would  be  their 
chances  of  getting  back  alive  or  uninjured  to  their 
homes  in  the  Bay  State.  Judge  Lynch  had  issued  a 
decree  of  expulsion  against  them,  and  from  his 
honor's  decree  there  was  no  appeal  in  a  Southern 
community.  And  so  Messrs.  Hoar  and  Hubbard, 
unable  to  resist,  bowed  reluctantly  to  the  inevitable, 
and  returned  to  Massachusetts,  soberer  and  far  wiser 
than  when  they  left  her.  Soberer  and  far  wiser  was 
Massachusetts  also  in  regard  to  her  rights  where  they 
came  into  collision  with  the  slave  interests  of  the 
South.  She  had  apparently  none  which  that  section 
was  bound  to  respect. 

In  this  subject  of  the  imprisonment  of  colored  sea 
men,  Sumner  took  great  interest.  Replying  to  in 
quiries,  addressed  to  him  by  Mr.  Winthrop  touching 
this  question,  he  wrote  a  capital  letter,  discussing  at 
length  and  with  much  learning  and  force  the  civic 
status  of  the 'free  colored  people  of  Massachusetts 
under  the  Federal  Constitution.  He  demonstrates 
that  they  are  citizens,  and  that  the  full  measure  of 
their  "  privileges  and  immunities"  in  Massachusetts 
constitutes  the  exact  sum  to  which  they  are  entitled 
in  the  several  States.  "  It  is  idle  to  reply,"  concludes 
his  admirable  argument,  "that  free  blacks,  natives  of 
South  Carolina,  are  treated  to  imprisonment  and 
bondage.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
does  not  prohibit  a  State  from  inflicting  injustice 
upon  its  own  citizens.  As  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
said,  with  regard  to  his  rotten  boroughs,  *  Shall  we 
not  do  what  we  will  with  our  o\\n?'  But  a  State 
must  not  extend  its  injustice  to  the  citizens  of  another 
State.  Unfortunately,  the  poor  slave  of  South  Caro- 


142  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

lina  and  the  free  blacks,  natives  of  that  State,  are 
citizens  thereof  :  they  owe  it  allegiance,  if  a  slave  can 
owe  allegiance.  Of  course,  they  have  no  other 
power  under  heaven,  from  whom  to  invoke  protec 
tion.  But  the  free  negro,  born  in  Massachusetts  and 
still  retaining  his  domicile  there,  wherever  he  finds 
himself,  may  invoke  the  protection  of  his  native 
State." 

As  early  as  1843,  Sumner  had  come  to  entertain  a 
decided  repugnance  to  caste  prejudice,  the  cruel  off 
spring  of  slavery.  Writing  to  John  Jay  in  acknowl 
edgment  of  the  receipt  of  his  pamphlet  on  "Caste 
and  Slavery  in  the  Church,"  he  observes:  "  Is  it  not 
strange  that  the  Church,  or  any  body  of  men  upon 
whom  the  faintest  ray  of  Christianity  has  fallen, 
should  endeavor  to  exclude  the  African,  '  guilty  of  a 
skin  not  colored  as  their  own,'  from  the  freest  par 
ticipation  in  the  privileges  of  worshiping  the  com 
mon  God?  It  would  seem  as  if  prejudice,  irrational 
as  it  is  uncharitable,  could  no  further  go.  Professing 
the  religion  of  Christ,  they  disaffirm  that  equality 
which  He  recognizes  in  all  in  His  presence  ;  and  they 
violate  that  most  beautiful  injunction  which  enfolds 
so  much  philanthropy  and  virtue, — *  Love  thy 
neighbor.'  .  .  .  The  Catholic  Church  is  wiser 
and  more  Christian.  On  the  marble  pavements  of 
their  cathedrals  all  are  equal ;  and  this  church  invites 
the  services  of  all  colors  and  countries.  While  in 
Italy,  it  was  my  good  fortune  to  pass  four  days  at  the 
Convent  of  Palazzuola,  on  the  margin  of  the  Alban 
Lake,  not  far  from  the  supposed  site  of  Alba  Longa. 
Among  the  brethren  of  this  convent  was  an  Abyssin 
ian,  very  recently  arrived  from  the  heart  of  Africa, 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  143 

whose  most  torrid  sun  had  burned  upon  him.  To 
one  accustomed  to  the  prejudices  of  color  which  pre 
vail  in  America,  it  was  beautiful  to  witness  the  free 
dom,  gentleness,  and  equality  with  which  he  mingled 
with  his  brethren.  His  dark  skin  seemed  to  give 
him  an  added  interest  in  their  eyes,  over  his  great 
claim  as  a  stranger  and  brother." 

In  the  autumn  of  1845,  true  to  his  anti-caste  creed, 
and  his  then  cardinal  moral  and  political  principle  of 
the  Equality  and  Brotherhood  of  Man,  he  declined  to 
lecture  before  the  Lyceum  at  New  Bedford  on 
account  of  its  refusal  to  admit  colored  people  to  the 
lectures  on  an  equal  footing  with  white  people. 
"  One  of  the  cardinal  truths  of  religion  and  freedom," 
he  wrote  to  the  committee  "  is  the  Equality  and 
Brotherhood  of  Man.  In  the  sight  of  God  and  of  all 
just  institutions  the  white  man  can  claim  no  prece 
dence  or  exclusive  privilege  from  his  color.  It  is  the 
accident  of  an  accident  that  places  a  human  soul 
beneath  the  dark  shelter  of  an  African  countenance, 
rather  than  beneath  our  colder  complexion.  Korean 
I  conceive  any  application  of  the  Divine  injunction, 
Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have  them  do  unto  you, 
more  pertinent  than  to  the  man  who  founds  a  dis 
crimination  between  his  fellow-men  on  difference  of 
skin."  ...  "In  lecturing  before  a  Lyceum 
which  has  introduced  the  prejudice  of  color  among 
its  laws,  and  thus  formally  reversed  an  injunction  of 
highest  morals  and  politics,  I  might  seem  to  sanction 
what  is  most  alien  to  my  soul,  and  join  in  disobedi 
ence  to  that  command  which  teaches  that  the  chil 
dren  of  earth  are  all  of  one  blood.  I  cannot  do  this." 
After  this  brave  rebuke  the  Lyceum  did  presently 


144  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

rescind  its  prescriptive  rule,  whereupon  Mr.  Sumner 
lectured  on  its  platform. 

Slavery  had  indeed  as  many  heads  as  the  fabled 
Lernaean  hydra,  and  the  prejudice  of  color  was  one 
of  its  crudest  manifestations  in  the  free  States. 
Almost  universally  the  free  people  of  color,  in  those 
States,  were  treated  as  somethiug  less  than  human. 
In  Church  and  State,  by  the  highest  and  lowest 
classes,  they  were  looked  upon  as  objects,  whom  to 
touch  socially,  was  degradation  and  defilement  of 
the  vilest  character.  They  were  pariahs  whom  the 
meanest  members  of  society  were  too  high  and 
mighty  to  recognize  as  men  and  brothers.  They  were 
the  poor  outcasts  whom  thieves  had  beaten  and 
stripped  of  their  human  heritage  and  left  helpless  in 
the  highway  of  the  Republic,  and  whom  the  priests 
and  Levites  of  the  American  Church  and  State  were 
passing  by  on  the  other  side.  But  Sumner,  the  good 
Samaritan,  did  not  so,  but  with  Garrison,  Phillips, 
and  the  anti-slavery  remnant  of  the  North,  was  try 
ing  to  bind  up  their  wounds,  and  seeking  to  restore 
to  them  that  which  the  inhumanity  of  America  had 
wrested  from  them. 

Plainly  the  slavery  question  was  attracting  Sum- 
ner's  attention  more  and  more,  taking  possession  of 
his  time  and  thoughts,  impelling  him  irresistibly 
away  from  his  scholarly  seclusion  and  pursuits  into 
the  open,  where  was  raging  the  irrepressible  conflict 
between  Right  and  Wrong.  Was  Right  in  dire  need, 
and  calling  for  help  ?  Then  it  was  not  for  him  to  be 
indifferent  or  neutral  in  such  a  struggle.  More  and 
more  frequent,  therefore,  were  his  rallies  to  her  suc 
cor,  and  longer  and  yet  more  long  did  he  remain 


HERCULES    TESTS    HIS    WEAPONS.  145 

fighting  by  her  side.  There  now  began  to  glow  and 
flame  within  him  a  new,  great  purpose,  a  new,  moraJ 
earnestness  and  enthusiasm.  Hercules,  ready  for 
battle,  was  on  his  way  to  attack  the  Lernaean 
hydra. 


10 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    LERN^EAN    HYDRA. 

THE  slavery  question  in  the  United  States  in  the 
year  1845  transcended  in  public  interest  all  other 
questions.  It  was  the  one  all-absorbing,  all-over 
shadowing  subject  in  the  Union.  There  was  no  citi 
zen,  however  obscure,  in  the  North  or  in  the  South, 
but  was  sucked  into  the  maelstrom  of  the  agitation 
in  this  year  of  grace  ;  there  was  none  so  high  and 
powerful  who  escaped  its  tremendous  moral  and 
political  suction  and  gravitation.  All  the  intelligence, 
all  the  conscience,  all  the  greed  for  power,  all  the 
sectional  jealousies  and  antagonisms  between  the 
slave-holding  and  the  non-slave-holding  halves  of  the 
Republic,  all  the  love  of  liberty  and  all  the  love  of 
slavery  rushed  together  in  the  storm  of  passion  which 
the  movement  for  the  annexation  of  Texas  aroused  in 
the  land. 

Sixteen  years  before,  William  Lloyd  Garrison  was 
persecuted  and  imprisoned  by  Maryland  justice  for 
writing  disrespectfully  of  a  fellow-townsman  of  his, 
Francis  Todd,  whose  ship  had  taken  a  cargo  of  slaves 
from  Baltimore  to  New  Orleans.  Fourteen  years 
before  the  Texas  agitation,  he,  the  aforesaid  Garrison, 
had  started  the  Liberator,  and  launched  the  anti- 
slavery  reform  at  the  same  time  upon  the  attention  of 
the  country.  Since  that  event,  a  marvelous  change 


THE    LERN^EAN    HYDRA.  147 

had  passed  over  every  part  of  the  nation  in  relation 
to  the  subject  of  slavery.  The  small  but  aggressive 
sect  of  Garrisonian  Abolitionists,  with  their  doctrine 
of  immediate  emancipation,  and  their  stern  denunci 
ations  of  slave-holding  as  robbery,  murder,  and  "  the 
sum  of  all  villainies,"  had  effected  an  almost  instant 
transformation  in  the  state  of  public  opinion  at  the 
South.  Not  only  were  Southern  interests  and  insti 
tutions  held  up  to  public  odium  by  the  Abolitionists, 
but  Southern  character  as  well.  It  is  not  in  human 
nature  to  be  indifferent  to  such  treatment.  It  drove 
the  South  wild  with  fear  and  indignation.  That  sec 
tion  metaphorically  foamed  with  excitement,  lost 
all  self-control,  and  plunged  into  excesses  of  rage, 
which  are  explicable  alone  on  the  ground  that  it  had 
suffered  a  sudden  aberration  of  reason  and  common 
sense.  It  put  a  price  on  the  heads  of  leading  Abol 
itionists,  issued  bulls  against  the  circulation  of  Aboli 
tion  publications  within  its  limits,  subjected  the  mails 
to  a  tyrannous  and  irresponsible  censorship,  and  indi 
viduals  to  outrageous  surveillance  and  barbarous 
abuse. 

The  Constitutional  provision  which  guarantees  to 
"  the  citizens  of  each  State  all  privileges  and  immuni 
ties  of  citizens  in  the  several  States,"  was  everywhere 
reduced  to  a  nullity  in  the  slave  States.  Northern 
men  were  presently  regarded  and  treated  precisely  as 
though  they  were  aliens  and  enemies  instead  of  fellow- 
citizens  of  a  common  country.  To  travel  through 
the  South  became  for  persons  from  the  North,  within 
a  surprisingly  brief  space  after  the  inauguration  of 
the  moral  movement  against  slavery,  as  hazardous 
an  undertaking  as  would  have  been  for  them  a  pas- 


148  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

sage  across  territory  belonging  to  a  foreign  and  hostile 
power.  Interstate  intercourse  and  communication 
were  increasingly  discouraged  and  obstructed.  The 
slave  section  drew  itself  more  and  more  aloof  from 
its  free  sister,  and  raised  higher  and  higher  about 
itself  insurmountable  social  barriers. 

To  these  signs  of  violent  disintegration  no  man 
in  his  senses  could  long  remain  blind.  The  slavery 
agitation  had  started  into  alarming  activity  in  the 
South  the  anti-Uniori-making  forces  of  our  federal 
system  of  government.  Therefore  all  those  material 
interests  and  habits  of  mind  in  the  free  States  which 
had  grown  up  around  the  Union  took  fright,  and 
sought  to  check  the  progress  of  these  anti-Union  for 
ces  in  the  South  by  repressing  the  anti-slavery  move 
ment  at  the  North.  The  anti-slavery  movement  was 
certainly  not  productive  of  domestic  harmony.  On 
the  contrary,  it  was  proving  itself,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
prodigious  promoter  of  domestic  discord.  From  the 
beginning,  this  feature  of  the  reform  aroused  against 
it  the  powerful  Union  feeling  of  the  Northern 
section. 

Attachment  to  liberty  was  with  that  section  a  much 
weaker  motive  of  action  than  attachment  to  the 
Union.  Its  opposition  to  slavery  was  largely  due  to 
the  fact  that  slavery  had  operated  in  the  general  Gov 
ernment  adversely  to  its  interests,  political  and  indus 
trial,  rather  than  through  sympathy  for  the  slave,  or 
antagonism  to  the  master-class  as  such.  American 
liberty  it  ever  was,  not  human  liberty,  which  possessed 
the  charm  to  stir  the  Northern  blood.  And  this  par 
ticular  notion  of  liberty  included,  among  other  things 
the  well  understood  American  Constitutional  right 


THE    LKRN/EAN    HYDRA.  149 

of  holding  the  African  race  in  bondage,  free  from 
Federal  interferance  or  interstate  intermeddling. 

Under  these  circumstances  and  in  this  highly  legal, 
if  not  highly  moral  view  of  the  situation,  the  two  sec 
tions  were  in  perfect  accord  in  respect  of  the  perni 
cious  and  unpatriotic  character  of  Garrisonian  Aboli 
tionism,  and  of  the  important  consequences  which 
depended  upon  its  suppression.  But  where  public 
opinion  ends,  and  legislative  action  begins,  there  the 
point  of  coincidence  between  the  two  halves  of  the 
Union  vanished,  and  sharp  lines  of  divergence  ap 
peared.  Owing  to  its  peculiar  social  and  political 
media,  the  South  was  able  to  translate  its  public 
opinion  against  the  agitation  into  harsh  and  precipi 
tate  legislation.  Quite  the  reverse  was,  however,  true 
of  the  North.  Its  social  and  political  media  tram 
meled  and  pulled  it  back  from  the  enactment  of 
similar  repressive  measures. 

The  disposition  was,  indeed,  in  many  instances, 
strong  to  do  likewise,  but  there  was  a  difficulty,  of 
which  Calhoun  gives  this  sharp  account,  in  1836  : 
"  The  Legislatures  of  the  South,  backed  by  the  will  of 
their  constituents,  expressed  through  innumerable 
meetings, have  called  upon  the  non-slave-holding  States 
to  repress  the  movements  made  within  the  jurisdiction 
of  those  States  against  their  peace  and  security.  Not 
a  step  has  been  taken  ;  not  a  law  has  been  passed  or 
even  proposed  ;  and  I  venture  to  assert  that  none  will 
be,  not  but  what  there  is  a  favorable  disposition 
toward  us  in  the  North,  but  I  clearly  see  the  state  of 
political  parties  there  presents  insuperable  impedi 
ments  to  any  legislation  on  the  subject.  I  rest  my 
opinion  on  the  fact  that  the  non-slave-holding  States, 


150  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

from  the  elements  of  their  population  are,  and  will 
continue  to  be,  divided  and  distracted  by  parties  of 
nearly  equal  strength,  and  that  each  will  always  be 
ready  to  seize  on  every  movement  of  the  other  which 
may  give  them  the  superiority  without  regard  to  con 
sequences  as  affecting  their  own  States  and  much  less 
remote  and  distant  sections." 

The  failure  of  the  North  to  adopt  the  prohibitory 
legislation  demanded  of  it  added  fresh  fuel  to  the  hot 
anger  burning  against  it  in  the  South.  Calhoun's 
interpretation  of  this  failure  did  not  mend  matters. 
It  tended  rather  to  deepen  a  fast-growing  conviction 
in  the  slave  States  of  the  incompatibility  of  their 
interests  with  those  of  the  free  States,  and  to  produce 
as  a  result,  increased  activity  of  the  principle  of  divi 
sion,  widely  in  operation  there.  A  disposition  to 
think  and  speak  in  unison  with  them  on  the  slavery 
question  was  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  slave  States. 
They  called  upon  the  North  through  their  Legislatures 
and  "innumerable  meetings  "  to  act  in  unison  with 
them  in  putting  down  the  Abolitionists.  But  this, 
according  to  Calhoun,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
North  could  not  possibly  do,  however  strong  might 
be  its  inclination  in  that  regard. 

It  was  the  same  with  the  controversy  over  the  right 
of  petition.  The  representatives  of  the  free  States  in 
Congress  were  desirous,  even  eager  to  oblige  the 
South  on  the  point.  They  were  ready  to  go,  and  did 
actually  go,  great  lengths  to  convince  that  section 
of  their  disapprobation  of  the  animus  and  prayers 
of  the  Abolition  petitions.  But  there  were  fixed 
limits  beyond  which  they  did  not  venture  to  step. 
The  Southern  extremists,  under  the  lead  of  Calhoun, 


THE    LERN/EAN     HYDRA.  151 

proposed  to  reject  the  objectionable  petitions,  with 
out  first  receiving  them.  Yet  such  a  "  Northern 
man  with  Southern  principles "  as  was  James 
Buchanan,  then  a  Senator  from  Pennsylvania,  shrank 
from  offending  the  sensibility  of  his  constituents  by 
lending  the  proposition  his  indorsement.  First 
receive  and  then  immediately  reject  was  as  harsh  a 
disposition  of  the  subject  as  the  exigencies  of  political 
parties  at  the  North  would  warrant.  This  attempt 
to  occupy  two  stools  proved  unsatisfactory  to  the 
South.  Calhoun  hotly  denounced  the  compromise 
suggestion  of  Mr.  Buchanan  as  "  a  mere  piece  of 
artifice  to  juggle  and  deceive."  "I  intend  no  dis 
respect  to  the  Senator,"  he  directly  apologized,  "I 
doubt  not  his  intention  is  good  and  I  believe  his  feel 
ings  are  with  us  ;  but  I  must  say  that  the  course  that 
he  has  intimated  is,  in  my  opinion,  the  worst  possible 
for  the  slave-holding  States."  And  so,  in  spite  of  the 
pro-slavery  intentions  and  feelings  of  the  North,  the 
two  sections  were  pulling  fatally  apart.  The  South 
ern  way  was  manifestly  not  the  Northern  way.  The 
free  States  could  not  travel  the  same  road  with  their 
slave  sisters  without  stumbling  upon  sectional  dif 
ferences  and  causes  of  strife. 

Another  circumstance,  growing  out  of  the  move 
ment  against  slavery,  produced  somewhat  similar 
results.  The  circumstance  referred  to  was  the  at 
tempt  to  suppress  Abolitionism  in  the  free  States,  by 
mob-law.  Shut  off  by  causes,  which  we  have  indicated, 
from  the  enactment  of  repressive  measures  against 
the  agitation  of  the  subject  of  slavery  within  its 
jurisdiction,  the  disposition  of  the  North  was,  never 
theless,  so  good  to  place  itself  in  accord  with  the 


152  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

South  under  that  head,  and  its  hostility  to  the 
Abolitionists  so  passionate  that  in  many  localities 
attempts  were  made  to  accomplish  by  popular  vio 
lence  what  was  denied  through  State  legislation. 
But  these  attempts  to  abolish  Abolition  in  the  free 
States  threatened  to  abolish  along  with  it  law  and 
order.  This  unexpected  danger  to  the  civil  establish 
ment  and  vested  interests  excited  presently  in  those 
States  the  greatest  apprehensions,  while  this  rising 
concern  created  in  time  a  public  sentiment  opposed 
to  lawlessness. 

The  ideal  and  the  goal  of  the  free  States  had  ever 
been  a  government  of  laws,  not  a  government  of  men, 
much  less  one  of  mobs.  The  Anglo-Saxon  self-con 
trol  and  respect  for  law  and  order,  which  had  char 
acterised  the  civilization  of  the  Northern  States  since 
the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims,  suffered  during  the  mob 
crisis  a  severe  shock.  Those  States  tardily  perceived 
that  it  was  quite  impossible  to  expose  one  portion  of 
society  to  the  lawlessness  of  another  without  putting 
in  jeopardy  the  welfare  and  security  of  the  whole. 
Each  class  must,  in  sooth,  be  protected  if  all  would 
be  safe.  License  to  set  at  naught  the  right  of 
assembly  and  free  discussion  of  any  part  of  the  people 
by  violence  was  an  invitation  to  do  the  same  upon 
occasion  to  other  parts  of  the  people.  If  mobs 
might  with  impunity  destroy  the  property  or  lives  of 
Abolitionists  because  of  a  difference  of  opinion  on  the 
question  of  slavery,  why  might  they  not  do  as  much 
to  the  property  and  lives  of  others  who  might  fail  to 
agree  with  them  on  a  wholly  different  subject?  In 
that  direction  ran  the  short  and  straight  road  to 
anarchy.  The  North,  when  its  sober  second  thought 


THE    LERN/EAN    HYDRA.  153 

had  come  to  it,  had  no  mind,  much  as  it  detested  the 
Abolitionists,  and  desired  to  demonstrate  its  sym 
pathy  with  the  South,  to  travel  this  downward  way  to 
certain  ruin.  And  it  pulled  itself  together  and  back 
upon  its  ancient  and  regular  tracks  of  law  and 
order. 

But  the  attempt  and  the  failure  were  productive  of 
other  and  grave  collateral  consequences.  The  attempt 
to  suppress  Abolitionism  in  the  free  States  by  mobs, 
and  the  dangers  to  society  which  ensued,  created  a 
reaction  in  those  States  adverse  to  slavery.  That 
Southern  institution  became  thenceforth  associated 
with  frightful  memories  of  violence  and  bloodshed, 
with  attacks  on  the  freedom  of  the  press  and  free 
speech,  and  with  outrages  upon  the  property  and 
persons  of  white  men.  A  new  sort  of  enemity  to 
slavery  was  thus  begotten  in  the  North.  The  enlight 
ened  self-interest  of  that  section  had  from  a  hitherto 
unoccupied  position  reexamined  the  system  and 
learned  how  irrepressible  was  the  conflict  between  it 
and  Northern  ideas,  interests,  and  institutions. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  anti-slavery  revulsion 
against  the  pro-slavery  excesses  of  the  period  added 
insult  to  the  Southern  sense  of  injury — threw  fresh  fuel 
upon  the  already  blazing  fires  of  the  grievances  of 
that  section.  It  had  called  in  vain  upon  the  North 
with  its  selfish  regard  for  law  and  order,  and  scrupu 
lous  respect  for  sundry  ancient  rights  of  the  people 
long  ago  discarded  at  the  South,  called  upon  it 
through  State  legislatures  and  "innumerable  meet 
ings  "  to  repress  the  firebrand  movement  against 
slavery.  And  what  answer  had  been  returned  ? 
Words,  nothing  but  words.  It  had  demanded  through 


154  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

its  representatives  in  Congress  the  rejection  of  fire 
brand  petitions,  containing  assaults  on  the  rights, 
character,  and  institutions  of  slaveholders;  and  the 
North  through  its  representatives  had,  notwithstand 
ing,  determined  to  receive  them.  But  the  unkindest 
cut  of  all  was,  perhaps,  the  anti-slavery  reaction  in 
the  free  States  against  pro-slavery  mobs.  Judge 
Lynch  was  a  recognized  authority  at  the  South.  A 
government  of  men,  as  contradistinguished  from  a 
government  of  laws,  had  ever  marked  the  civilization 
of  that  section,  inhered,  in  fact,  in  its  central  social 
principle.  In  practice,  however  the  thing  may  appear 
in  theory,  there  is  but  a  short  step  from  a  govern 
ment  of  men  to  a  government  by  mobs. 

Viewing  the  situation  from  totally  opposite  stand 
points,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  slave-holding  and  the 
non-slave-holding  sections  failed  to  appreciate  the 
feelings  and  the  needs  of  each  other.  The  act  that 
helped  one  hurt  the  other.  The  mobs,  which  were 
to  advantage  the  South,  wrought  no  end  of  mis 
chief  at  the  North.  And  so,  instead  of  repressing 
the  Abolition  propaganda,  the  free  States  seemed  to 
the  slave  ones  to  be  much  more  concerned  about  the 
repression  of  the  peculiarly  Southern  treatment  of 
the  incendiaries.  Increased  friction  and  ill-will 
between  the  two  halves  of  the  Union  were,  in  con 
sequence,  engendered.  The  seeds  of  alienation  and 
hate  grew  apace  through  the  South.  The  schism 
between  the  sections  sensibly  widened,  and  the  anti- 
Union  working  forces  took  on  in  the  slave  States 
redoubled  activity  and  intensity. 

The  Abolition  movement,  meanwhile,  was  making 
astonishing  progress.  All  attempts  to  suppress  it  but 


THE    LERN/EAN    HYDRA.  155 

operated  to  augment  its  energy  and  growth.  The 
higher  the  tide  of  persecution  rose,  the  higher  the 
spirit  of  the  reform  mounted.  Events  moved  in  those 
troublous  times  with  surprising  celerity.  What  under 
other  conditions  would  have  required,  perhaps,  fifty 
years  to  effect,  was  accomplished  then  in  ten.  The 
whole  North  in  half  of  that  brief  space  was  converted 
into  one  vast  resounding  anti-slavery  debating  club. 
The  anti-slavery  lecturer  was  omnipresent.  Anti- 
slavery  publications  issued  from  the  anti-slavery 
press  "  Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the 
brooks  in  Vallambrosa."  Anti-slavery  societies  and 
multitudes  seemed  to  rush  in  streams  out  of  the 
ground. 

In  1837,  Calhoun,  who,  more  than  any  other  states 
man  of  his  time,  comprehended  the  underlying  causes 
of  difference  and  strife  between  the  sections,  gave  this 
gloomy  forecast  of  the  agitation  :  "  Already  it  (Aboli 
tion)  has  taken  possession  of  the  pulpit,  of  the  schools, 
and,  to  a  considerable  extent,  of  the  press — those  great 
instruments  by  which  the  mind  of  the  rising  genera 
tion  will  be  formed.  However  sound  the  great  body 
of  the  non-slave-holding  States  are  at  present,  in  the 
course  of  a  few  years  they  will  be  succeeded  by  those 
who  will  have  been  taught  to  hate  the  people  and 
institutions  of  nearly  one-half  of  this  Union  with  a 
hatred  more  deadly  than  one  hostile  nation  ever 
entertained  towards  another.  It  is  easy  to  see  the 
end.  By  the  necessary  course  of  events,  if  left  to 
themselves,  we  must  become,  finally,  two  peoples.  It 
is  impossible  under  the  deadly  hatred  which  must 
spring  up  between  the  two  great  sections,  if  the 
present  causes  are  permitted  to  operate  unchecked, 


156  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

that  we  should  continue  under  the  same  political 
system." 

Thus  early  had  the  national  situation  in  respect  of 
slavery  assumed  an  aspect  of  extreme  gravity.  To 
the  Union  worshipers  the  outlook  was  threatening 
enough.  For  all  the  signs  indicated  that  the  coun 
try  was  hurrying  into  a  state  of  increasing  uproar 
and  conflict.  In  the  South,  the  fatal  conviction  was 
deepening  and  spreading  that  Abolition  and  the 
Union  could  not  possibly  coexist  ;  while  in  the  North 
the  contrary  belief  was  likewise  deepening  and 
spreading  that  slavery  and  the  Union  could  not 
together  permanently  endure.  The  crashing  and 
grinding  of  those  enormous,  antagonistic  forces  of 
public  opinion  was  working  destructively  on  the 
brotherly  feeling  of  the  people  of  the  South  and  of 
those  of  the  North,  so  that  even  then  the  deadly 
hatred,  predicted  by  Calhoun,  was  beginning  between 
the  sections. 

It  was  at  this  stage  of  the  irrepressible  conflict 
that  the  agitation  over  the  annexation  of  Texas 
appeared  to  make  matters  already  very  bad  a  great 
deal  worse.  However,  the  design  of  the  South  upon 
Texas  was  natural  enough,  as  will  be  seen  by  a  con 
sideration  of  the  causes  which  led  up  to  it.  In  the 
contest  between  the  sections  for  political  ascendency 
in  the  general  Government  the  South  had  been  losing 
ground  since  the  close  of  the  war  of  1812.  The 
North  had,  since  that  event,  far  outstripped  it  in 
wealth  and  population,  in  fine,  in  all  the  elements  of 
a  superior  and  progressive  civilization.  Socially  and 
industrially  the  free  States  in  1840  were  indisputably 
the  stronger,  and  the  slave  ones  the  weaker  half  of 


THE    LERN^EAN    HYDRA.  157 

the  Union.  One  had  become  a  relatively  increasing, 
and  the  other  a  relatively  diminishing  national  quan 
tity.  The  industrial  and  social  balance  between 
them  was  hopelessly  destroyed.  The  influence  of 
this  fact  alone  would,  in  course  of  time,  by  the  opera 
tion  of  economic  laws,  redress  the  political  balance 
between  the  sections  in  favor  of  the  free  States. 

This  great  northward  trend  of  wealth,  population, 
and  social  strength  in  the  Republic,  early  attracted 
the  notice  of  Southern  leaders,  who  could  not  con 
ceal  the  apprehensions  which,  in  consequence,  they 
felt  for  the  future  of  the  slave-holding  States.  Cal- 
houn  watched  it  with  profound  and  intense  attention. 
What  he  saw  was  calculated  to  appal  a  less  resolute 
and  indomitable  spirit.  For  clearly  it  was  written  in  all 
this  northward  tilt  of  population  and  industrial 
prosperity  the  mene  mene  tekel  upharsin  of  Southern 
domination  in  the  national  Government,  unless, 
indeed,  some  means  were  discovered  for  overcoming 
and  reversing  the  action  of  economic  laws  and  forces 
at  the  moment  in  full  play  in  the  Republic.  Cer 
tainly  it  behooved  the  weaker  section  to  exert  itself 
in  this  political  extremity. 

The  slave  line  of  1820  shut  slavery  within  territo 
rial  limits  which  it  was  never  to  exceed.  The  slave 
soil  created  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  now 
nearly  exhausted.  The  admission  of  new  slave  States 
was  about  to  cease  for  want  of  material  out  of  which 
to  carve  them.  And  with  this  final  check  to  the  terri 
torial  expansion  of  the  slave-power,  the  slave-holding 
States  would  pass  in  the  national  Senate,  as  they  had 
long  ago  passed  in  the  national  House,  to  the  hope 
less  condition  of  a  relatively  declining  minority,  to 


158  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

be  outnumbered  and  outvoted,  on  all  sectional  mat 
ters  and  issues,  by  their  non-slave-holding  rivals. 
With  the  downfall  of  the  South  in  the  Senate  would 
vanish,  as  a  matter  of  course,  its  long  political  ascen 
dency  in  the  Union,  and  in  time  its  slave  institutions 
would  disappear  also. 

This  horrible  possibility  oppressed  Calhoun  like  a 
nightmare.  Tormented  by  gloomy  and  anxious 
thoughts  for  the  future  of  his  section  and  its  indus 
trial  system,  the  veteran  slave  champion  began  to 
question  the  wisdom  of  a  compromise  which  he  had 
helped  to  adopt.  In  this  state  of  mind  he  came  to 
view  the  Missouri  settlement  as  a  cardinal  blunder  on 
the  side  of  the  South,  and  to  cast  about  him  for  some 
escape  out  of  the  trap  in  which  it  had  caught  the 
slave-power. 

Then  it  was  that  Texas  rose  on  our  horizon 
in  its  struggle  for  independence.  The  uprising 
of  Texas  against  Mexico  was  the  breaking  of 
day  on  the  midnight  darkness  of  the  South.  In  that 
instant  Calhoun's  purpose  was  formed — he  would  cor 
rect  the  old  blunder  of  1820  by  the  annexation  of 
slave  territory,  which,  in  the  graphic  language  of 
Webster,  "  a  bird  could  not  fly  over  in  a  week."  Out 
of  its  immense,  undefined  area  slave  States  might  be 
formed  as  the  Southern  exigency  might  demand.  So 
at  least  reasoned  many  of  the  leaders  of  that  section. 
The  stakes  were  high,  and  they  played  for  them  with 
a  bold  and  masterly  hand.  From  small  beginnings 
the  agitation  rose  under  the  dextrous  management  of 
Calhoun  to  tremendous  proportions.  "  Texas  or  dis 
union  "  was  the  cry  which  the  South  finally  raised, 
and  it  shortly  expressed  the  determined  and  despe- 


THE    LERN^EAN    HYDRA.  159 

rate  purpose  of  that  section  in  relation  to  an 
nexation. 

The  free  States  on  the  other  hand  were  not  at  all 
disposed  to  look  with  favor  upon  a  scheme  to  aug 
ment  the  slave  soil  of  the  country.  All  the  old  dread 
of  Southern  domination,  and  dissatisfaction  with  the 
Southern  advantages,  contained  in  the  original  basis 
of  the  Union,  stirred  wrathfully  in  the  hot  heart  of 
the  North  as  the  Texan  agitation  approached  its  con 
clusion.  The  Southern  challenge  of  "  Texas  or 
disunion  "  was  answered  by  the  Northern  de 
fiance  of  "  No  more  slave  soil,"  "  No  more  slave 
States." 

The  struggle  was  long  and  fierce,  leaving  on  both 
sections  lasting  and  bitter  effects.  It,  too,  like  pre 
vious  contests,  was  concluded  by  a  compromise,  if 
that  can  be  called  a  compromise,  by  which  one  side 
makes  all  the  concessions,  and  the  other  receives 
every  substantial  advantage.  Texas  was  admitted 
into  the  Union.  The  slave  line  of  36°  30',  as  a  mat 
ter  of  form,  was  drawn  through  it,  and  a  limit  im 
posed  upon  the  number  of  States,  which  might  there 
after  be  constructed  from  it.  These  shadowy,  negative 
benefits  accrued  to  freedom.  Slavery  got  the  rest. 
Slavery  was  triumphant.  Freedom  had  suffered,  what 
seemed  at  the  time,  a  disastrous  defeat. 

But  there  were  collateral  consequences,  which, 
in  a  measure,  compensated  to  liberty  this  crush 
ing  blow.  The  moral  awakening  which  grew  out 
of  the  agitation  in  the  free  States  proved  an  incal 
culable  good.  For  it  accelerated  the  spread  of  anti- 
slavery  sentiment  by  the  creation  of  popular  con 
ditions  favorable  to  their  diffusion  and  adoption. 


160  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

It  enlisted  besides,  the  active  sympathy  and  cooper 
ation  of  a  highly  intelligent  and-  influential  class, 
which  had  previously  taken  no  positive  position  on 
the  subject  of  slavery. 

On  the  flood  thus  fed,  the  Abolition  movement 
passed  from  a  state  of  pure  moral  agitation  to  its  more 
momentous  phase  of  organized  political  opposition 
to  the  evil.  This  annexation  controversy,  in  its 
progress,  consummation,  and  consequences,  precipi 
tated  at  the  North  the  formation  of  a  political  party 
movement  along  distinctively  sectional  lines.  In  this 
aspect  of  the  matter,  the  triumph  of  the  South  was 
not  an  unqualified  gain.  It  must,  in  fact,  be  counted 
a  sort  of  Pyrric  victory.  But  this  was  not  all.  "Pitch 
the  Devil  out  of  the  door,"  runs  an  old  saw,  "and 
he  returns  through  the  window."  Troubles  assailed 
the  South  from  an  unexpected  quarter.  She  had  cast 
out  her  dread  of  Northern  political  ascendency  by- 
annexing  Texas.  But,  alack  and  alas !  this  same 
dread  had  returned  with  tenfold  strength  on  the 
wings  of  the  Mexican  War.  Calhoun  was  checkmated; 
fate  had  outgeneraled  the  slave-power. 

It  was  the  aim  of  the  Texan  plotters  to  augment 
the  Southern  term  of  the  fraction  of  Federal  political 
power.  The  acquisition  of  California  and  New 
Mexico  frustrated  this  design  by  multiplying  the 
Northern  term  of  the  fraction  of  Federal  political 
power.  Calhoun  confessed  at  this  juncture  that  he 
was  no  longer  able  to  forecast  the  future.  An  impene 
trable  curtain  had  dropped  between  the  present  and 
the  hereafter,  which  shut  from  his  vision  everything 
but  the  stern  and  overwhelming  catastrophe.  And 
no  wonder.  For  he  and  his  section  had  plunged 


THE    LERNJEAN    HYDRA.  l6l 

abruptly  into  one  of  those  terrible  blind  alleys  in 
which  human  history  abounds.  They  were  entangled, 
entrapped  in  the  toils  of  their  own  setting.  The 
engineers  of  the  Texan  scheme  were  hoisted  by 
their  own  petard. 


II 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS. 

THE  Texan  agitation  drew  forth  Sumner's  first 
political  speech.  Writing  to  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  in  the 
winter  of  1843,  he  feared  "some  insidious  movement 
in  favor  of  Texas."  "  The  South  yearns,"  he  goes  on 
to  remark,  "for  that  immense  cantle  of  territory  to 
carve  into  great  slave-holding  States.  We  shall  wit 
ness  in  this  Congress  some  animated  contests  on  this 
matter."  His  fear  was  well  founded,  his  prognosti 
cation  sustained  by  the  developments  of  the  new 
year.  The  agitation  for  annexation  burned  fiercely 
in  Congress,  spread  from  Congress  to  the  four  quar 
ters  of  the  nation.  Such  progress  had  the  fires  of  the 
agitation  made  within  a  twelvemonth,  that  in  1845 
they  attained  the  magnitude  of  a  general  confla 
gration.  The  excitement  in  the  North  was  intense — 
tremendous.  Meetings  in  opposition  to  annexation 
were  held  throughout  the  free  States.  A  new  note,  or 
rather  an  old  note,  struck  by  the  North  twice  before 
within  thirty  years,  a  note  of  passionate  dread  of,  and 
passionate  antagonism  to,  the  domination  of  slavery 
in  the  Government,  a  note  in  which  Liberty,  not 
Union,  formed  the  major  tone,  sounded  like  a  tocsin 
in  the  land.  The  alarm  of  the  free  States  was  pro 
found — prodigious.  In  Massachusetts  the  agitation 
excitement  reached  perhaps,  its  height,  and  the  spirit 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  163 

of  bold  resistance  to  the  extension  of  slavery  culmi 
nated. 

Sumner  made  his  political  debut  on  the  night  of 
November  4,  1845,  at  a  public  meeting,  held  in  Fan- 
ueil  Hall,  to  protest  against  the  admission  of  Texas 
with  her  slave  constitution  into  the  Union.  Charles 
Francis  Adams  presided  on  the  occasion,  and  William 
I.  Bowditch  acted  as  one  of  the  secretaries.  Young 
men  then,  they  both  subsequently  added  lustre  to 
names  then  already  illustrious  in  statesmanship  and 
science.  Sumner's  was  a  leading  part  in  the  demon 
stration,  not  only  uttering  with  eloquent  lips  the 
thoughts  of  the  hour,  but  voicing  with  eloquent  pen 
also  the  anti-slavery  feelings  of  the  meeting,  in  resolu 
tions  of  singular  boldness,  humanity,  and  energy.  He 
struck  firmly  on  this  first  evening  the  keynote  of  his 
entire  public  career,  viz,  the  equality  and  brotherhood  of 
all  men,  as  set  forth  in  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  : 

"  Whereas,  The  Government  and  Independence  of 
the  United  States,"  so  opened  the  resolutions,  "are 
founded  on  the  adamantine  truth  of  Equal  Rights  and 
the  Brotherhood  vf  all  Men,  declared  on  the  4th  of 
July,  1776,  a  truth  receiving  new  and  constant  recog 
nition  in  the  progress  of  time,  and  which  is  the  great 
lesson  from  our  country  to  the  world,  in  support  of 
which  the  founders  toiled  and  bled,  and  on  account  of 
which  we,  their  children,  bless  their  memory.  .  .  . 

"And  Whereas,  This  scheme  [for  the  annexation  of 
Texas  as  a  slave  State],  if  successful,  involves  the 
whole  country,  free  States  as  well  as  slave  ones,  in 
one  of  the  two  greatest  crimes  a  nation  can  commit, 
and  threatens  to  involve  them  in  the  other,  namely, 


164  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

slavery  and  unjust  war,  slavery  of  the  most  revolt 
ing  character,  and  war  to  sustain  slavery.     .     .     . 

"Therefore  Be  It  Resolved,  In  the  name  of  God,  of 
Christ,  and  of  Humanity,  that  we,  belonging  to  all 
political  parties,  and  reserving  all  other  reasons  of 
objection,  unite  in  protest  against  the  admission  of 
Texas  into  this  Union  as  a  slave  State. 

"  Resolved,  That  the  people  of  Massachusetts  will 
continue  to  resist  the  consummation  of  this  wicked 
purpose,  which  will  cover  the  country  with  disgrace 
and  make  us  responsible  for  crimes  of  gigantic  mag 
nitude."  .  .  . 

Such  were  the  anti-slavery  style  and  spirit  of  those 
first  political  resolutions.  The  anti-slavery  style  and 
spirit  of  the  first  political  speech  were  like  unto 
them. 

It  was  the  wrong  of  slavery  in  its  moral,  rather 
than  in  its  political,  aspect,  which  formed  the  subject 
and  the  burden  of  this  speech.  Great  as  would  be 
the  evil  of  annexation  to  the  people  of  the  North,  it 
could  not  equal  the  crime  of  it  against  humanity. 
"  I  cannot  dwell  now,"  said  the  orator,  "  upon  the 
controlling  political  influence  in  the  councils  of  the 
country  which  the  annexation  of  Texas  will  secure  to 
slaveholders  ;  this  topic  is  of  importance,  but  it  yields 
to  the  supreme  requirements  of  religion,  morals,  and 
humanity.  I  cannot  banish  from  my  view  the  great 
shame  and  wrong  of  slavery.  Judges  of  our  courts 
have  declared  it  contrary  to  the  Law  of  Nature,  find 
ing  its  support  only  in  positive  enactments  of  men. 
Its  horrors  who  can  tell  ?  Language  utterly  fails  to 
depict  them. 

"  By   the   proposed  measure,  we  not  only  become 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  165 

parties  to  the  acquisition  of  a  large  population  of 
slaves,  with  all  the  crime  of  slavery,  but  we  open  a 
new  market  for  the  slaves  of  Virginia  and  the  Caro- 
linas,  and  legalize  a  new  slave-trade.  A  new  slave- 
trade  !  Consider  this  well.  You  cannot  forget  the 
horrors  of  that  too  famous  '  middle  passage,'  where 
crowds  of  human  beings,  stolen,  and  borne  by  sea 
far  from  their  warm  African  homes,  are  pressed  on 
shipboard  into  spaces  of  smaller  dimensions  for  each 
than  a  coffin.  And  yet  the  deadly  consequences  of 
this  middle  passage  are  believed  to  fall  short  of  those 
sometimes  undergone  by  the  wretched  coffles  driven 
from  the  exhausted  lands  of  the  Northern  slave  States 
to  the  sugar  plantations  nearer  the  sun  of  the  South. 
One-quarter  are  said  often  to  perish  in  these  removals. 
I  see  them,  in  imagination,  on  their  fatal  journey, 
chained  in  bands,  and  driven  like  cattle,  leaving 
behind  what  has  become  to  them'a  home  and  a  coun 
try  (alas!  what  a  home  and  what  a  country!) — 
husband  torn  from  wife,  and  parent  from  child,  to  be 
sold  anew  into  more  direful  captivity.  Can  this  take 
place  with  our  consent,  nay,  without  our  most 
determined  opposition  ?  If  the  slave-trade  is  to 
receive  new  adoption  from  our  country,  let  us  have 
no  part  or  lot  in  it.  Let  us  wash  our  hands  of  this 
great  guilt.  As  we  read  its  horrors  may  each  of  us 
be  able  to  exclaim,  with  conscience  void  of  offense, 
'Thou  canst  not  say  I  did  it.'  God  forbid  that  the 
votes  and  voices  of  Northern  freemen  should  help  to 
bind  anew  the  fetters  of  the  slave  !  God  forbid  that 
the  lash  of  the  slavedealer  should  descend  by  any 
sanction  from  New  England  !  God  forbid  that  the 
blood  which  spurts  from  the  lacerated,  quivering 


l66  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

flesh  of  the  slave  should  soil  the  hem  of  the  white 
garments  of  Massachusetts  !  " 

This  was  the  first  of  many  addresses  which,  in  time, 
were  to  fill  many  volumes  on  the  subject  of  slavery. 
It  was  not  one  of  those  marvels  of  the  orator's  art 
and  eloquence,  such  as  was  Wendell  Phillips's  first 
speech  from  the  same  platform  nearly  eight  years 
before.  Of  itself,  it  could  not  have  placed  its 
author  in  the  front  rank  of  the  orators  of  the  times. 
But  it  was  the  beginning  of  an  oratoric  stream,  which, 
growing  with  the  years  and  the  great  cause  of 
humanity,  was  to  roll  through  the  land  like  some 
Mississippi  of  the  anti-slavery  movement. 

About  a  dozen  years  previously,  Sumner  had  seen 
slaves  for  the  first  time  as  the  reader  will  perhaps 
recall.  The  reader  will  perhaps  recall,  also,  how  the 
sight  of  them  affected  him  then,  and  the  scholarly 
aversion  with  which  their  appearance  filled  him. 
His  "  worst  preconception  of  their  appearance  and 
ignorance  did  not  fall  as  low  as  their  actual  stupid 
ity,"  he  wrote.  "  They  appear  to  be  nothing  more 
than  moving  masses  of  flesh,  unendowed  with  any 
thing  of  intelligence  above  the  brutes."  That  was  to 
the  scholar's  eye,  but  how  different  they  now  appeared 
to  the  humanitarian's  is  seen  in  the  noble  passage 
beginning  "  I  see  them,  in  imagination,  on  their  fatal 
journey,"  etc.  They  are  no  longer  "  moving  masses 
of  flesh,"  but  men  and  brothers,  husbands,  wives, 
parents,  and  children.  The  scholar's  aversion  has 
given  place  to  deep  and  passionate  human  sympathy; 
the  political  evils  of  their  enslavement  pales  and 
dwindles  by  the  side  of  the  awful  and  appalling  wrong 
of  it.  The  moral  nature  of  the  young  jurist  is  on 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  167 

fire  with  tender  pity  for  those  selfsame  slaves,  who 
once  seemed  to  him  "  unendowed  with  anything  of 
intelligence  above  the  brutes,"  and  ablaze  with  hostile 
aversion  to  the  system,  which  so  cruelly  oppresses 
and  dehumanizes  them. 

From  that  brave  beginning,  Sumner's  voice  was 
not  long  intermitted  on  this  transcendent  subject  of 
his  own  and  the  nation's  thoughts.  Struck  with  the 
truth  of  that  profound  saying  of  Schiller,  "  Give  the 
world  beneath  your  influence  a  direction  towards  the 
good,  and  the  tranquil  rhythm  of  time  will  bring 
its  development,"  he  began  with  a  noble  enthusiasm 
to  give,  as  far  as  in  him  lay,  the  public  sentiment  of 
Boston  and  Massachusetts  a  direction  toward  the 
equal  rights  and  brotherhood  of  all  men,  regardless 
of  race  and  color,  now  seizing  one  occasion,  now 
another  in  the  swift  flying  months  and  years,  to  do 
what  the  while  was  clearly  becoming  the  supreme 
passion  and  purpose  of  his  life. 

On  August  27,  1846,  occurred  one  of  those  occa 
sions  turned  by  Sumner  to  the  advancement  of  the 
freedom  of  the  slave.  It  was  then  that  he  delivered  his 
memorable  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Cambridge  on 
"The  Scholar,  The  Jurist,  The  Artist,  The  Philan 
thropist,"  which  was  a  tribute  to  John  Pickering, 
Joseph  Story,  Washington  Allston,  and  William 
Ellery  Channing,  who  had  all  passed  away  during  the 
preceding  quadrennial  of  the  society.  An  address 
on  the  nation's  anti-slavery  duties  would  not  have 
been  tolerated  by  the  scholars  of  the  University  at 
that  time,  or  for  that  matter  at  any  subsequent  period 
prior  to  emancipation.  The  scholars  of  Harvard  did 
not  take  kindly  either  to  the  anti-slavery  agitation  or 


l68  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  agitators,  as  Sumner  presently  learned  by  pain 
ful  experience.  But  on  that  August  day,  fenced 
behind  four  such  illustrious  names,  the  young  phi 
lanthropist  was  able  to  preach  some  plain  truth,  touch 
ing  the  wrong  of  slavery  to  the  men  who  put  human 
lore  above  human  liberty. 

The  life  of  Dr.  Channing  furnished  the  text  for 
the  anti-slavery  portion  of  that  splendid  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  discourse.  Channing's  highest  praise  was  his 
love  of  humanity,  his  passion  for  righteusness,  his 
championship  of  the  rights  of  man,  his  exaltation  of 
the  worth  of  the  individual  man  not  alone  in  his 
relations  to  another  world,  but  in  those  to  the  present 
also.  The  image  of  the  deity,  which  he  recognized 
beneath  all  varieties  of  races,  colors,  and  conditions  in 
the  nature  of  man  he  held  a  sacred  charge  to  be 
cherished,  and  defended  always  and  everywhere 
against  the  dehumanizing  and  infernal  forces  of  vio 
lence  and  wrong.  His  contest  with  war  and  slavery 
was  not  a  contest  against  them  as  mere  abstractions, 
but  as  present,  particular,  and  terrible  realities.  He 
did  not  content  himself  with  a  discharge  into  the  air 
of  a  few  broadsides  of  general  moral  principles  and 
platitudes,  deceiving  himself  into  the  absurd  belief 
that  he  was  fighting  for  Right  and  against  Wrong. 
Nothing  of  the  kind.  "  His  morality,  elevated  by 
Christian  love,  fortified  by  Christian  righteousness, 
was  frankly  applied  to  the  people  and  affairs  of  his 
own  country  and  age.  .  .  .  He  brought  his  moral 
ity  to  bear  distinctly  upon  the  world.  Nor  was  he 
disturbed  by  another  suggestion,  which  the  moralist 
often  encounters,  that  his  views  were  sound  in  theory, 
but  not  practical.  He  well  knew  that  what  was 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  169 

unsound  in  theory  must  be  vicious  in  practice.  Undis 
turbed  by  hostile  criticism,  he  did  not  hesitate  to 
arraign  the  wrong  he  discerned,  and  fasten  upon  it 
the  mark  of  Cain.  His  philanthropy  was  morality  in 
action." 

Channing  taught  that  there  was  not  one  code  of 
morals  for  nations,  and  another  for  individuals. 
What  was  right  for  one  was  right  for  the  other  ; 
what  was  wrong  for  an  individual  to  do  was  no  less  a 
wrong  when  done  by  a  nation.  "  This  truth  cannot 
be  too  often  proclaimed,"  proceeded  the  orator  in  the 
strain  and  tone  of  an  anointed  prophet-apostle  of 
humanity.  "Pulpit,  press,  school,  college,  all  should 
render  it  familiar  to  the  ear,  and  pour  it  into  the  soul. 
Beneficent  Nature  joins  with  the  moralist  in  declar 
ing  the  universality  of  God's  laws  ;  the  flowers  of  the 
field,  the  rays  of  the  sun,  the  morning  and  evening 
dews,  the  descending  showers,  the  waves  of  the  sea, 
the  breezes  that  fan  our  cheeks  and  bear  rich  argosies 
from  shore  to  shore,  the  careering  storm,  all  on  this 
earth, — nay,  more,  the  system  of  which  this  earth  is 
a  part,  and  the  infinitude  of  the  Universe,  in  which 
our  system  dwindles  to  a  grain  of  sand, — all  declare 
one  prevailing  law,  knowing  no  distinction  of  person, 
number,  mass,  or  extent." 

Coming  directly  to  the  subject  of  slavery,  Sumner 
pointed  out  how,  in  defense  of  African  liberty,  Chan 
ning  "  invoked  always  the  unanswerable  considera 
tions  of  justice  and  humanity.  The  argument  of 
economy,  deemed  by  some  to  contain  all  that  is  per 
tinent,"  continued  the  orator,  "  never  presented  itself 
to  him.  The  question  of  profit  and  loss  was  absorbed 
in  the  question  of  right  and  wrong.  His  maxim 


170  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

was — anything  but  slavery  ;  poverty  sooner  than 
slavery.  But  while  exhibiting  this  institution  in 
blackest  colors,  as  inhuman,  unjust,  unchristian, 
unworthy  of  an  enlightened  age,  and  of  a  republic 
professing  freedom,  his  gentle  nature  found  no  word  of 
harshness  for  those  whom  birth,  education,  and  cus 
tom  bred  to  its  support. 

"  He  urged  the  duty — such  was  his  unequivocal 
language — incumbent  on  the  Northern  States  to  free 
themselves  from  all  support  of  slavery.  To  this  con 
clusion  he  was  driven  irresistibly  by  the  ethical 
principle,  that  what  is  wrong  for  the  individual  is  wrong 
for  the  State.  No  son  of  the  Pilgrims  can  hold  a  fel 
low-man  in  bondage.  Conscience  forbids.  No  son 
of  the  Pilgrims  can,  through  Government,  hold  a 
fellow-man  in  bondage.  Conscience  equally  for 
bids." 

Thus  did  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  orator  seize  the 
occasion  to  lift  up  the  standard  of  equality  and 
human  brotherhood  "  to  light  a  fresh  beacon-fire  on 
the  venerable  walls  of  Harvard,  sacred  to  Truth,  to 
Christ,  and  to  the  Church  "  ;  and,  when  glowing  with 
his  great  theme,  he  exclaimed  at  the  end,  "  Let  the 
flame  pass  from  steeple  to  steeple,  from  hill  to  hill, 
from  island  to  island,  from  continent  to  continent,  till 
the  long  lineage  of  fires  illumine  all  the  nations  of 
the  earth,  animating  them  to  the  holy  contests  of 
KNOWLEDGE,  JUSTICE,  BEAUTY,  LOVE/'  there  arose  a 
sympathetic  response  in  the  heart  of  one,  at  least,  of 
his  auditors.  This  particular  auditor  was,  however, 
a  host  in  himself,  for  he  was  no  less  a  personage  than 
John  Quincy  Adams,  who  perceived  then  that  in  the 
drama  of  slavery,  destiny  had  called  Sumner  to  play 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  17 1 

a  great  part.  "  The  pleasure  with  which  I  listened 
to  your  discourse,"  wrote  the  Old  Man  Eloquent  two 
days  after  the  delivery  of  the  oration,  "  was  inspired 
far  less  by  the  success  and  all  but  universal  accep 
tance  and  applause  of  the  present  moment,  than  by 
the  vista  of  the  future  which  is  opened  to  my  view. 
Casting  my  eyes  backward  no  farther  than  the  4th  of 
July  of  last  year,  when  you  set  all  the  vipers  of 
Alecto  a-hissing  by  proclaiming  the  Christian  law  of 
universal  peace  and  love,  and  then  casting  them  for 
ward,  perhaps  not  much  farther,  but  beyond  my  own 
allotted  time,  I  see  you  have  a  mission  to  perform. 
I  look  from  Pisgah  to  the  Promised  Land  ;  you  must 
enter  upon  it.  ...  To  the  motto  on  my  seal 
[Alter  a  saeculo\,  add  Delenda  est  servitus" 

No  need,  however,  for  the  parting  injunction; 
Delenda  est  servitus  was  already  deeply  graven  on  the 
seal  of  the  young  reformer.  From  this  moment  his 
attacks  upon  the  national  sin  never  slackened,  but 
increased  in  frequency  and  energy.  Four  weeks 
later  he  renewed  the  assault  in  the  Whig  State  Con 
vention  of  Massachusetts,  held  in  Faneuil  Hall,  Sep 
tember  23,  1846.  But  he,  young  and  ardent,  had  his 
illusions  to  be  dispelled,  and  one  of  those  was  the 
hope  of  converting  the  Whig  party  into  an  anti-slav 
ery  instrument.  He  perceived  the  necessity  of  an 
organized  political  movement  devoted  to  freedom, 
to  oppose  the  political  organization  devoted  to  slav 
ery.  He  knew  that  great  national  parties  are  not 
made  to  order,  but  are  born,  evolved  out  of  circum 
stances  which  require  their  agency  in  giving  direc 
tion  to  public  sentiment  and  solving  public  problems. 
There  were  signs  that  such  a  party  was  forming  in 


172  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  matrix  of  time,  preparations  for  it  like  the  Lib 
erty  party,  prophecies  of  it  like  the  rise  and  growth 
of  anti-slavery  principles  in  the  body  of  both  of  the 
old  parties,  but  a  new  party,  devoted  to  freedom  was 
not  among  the  political  probabilities  of  the  year  1846. 
And  this,  of  course,  Sumner  well  knew,  even  had  he 
no  faith  in  the  ultimate  conversion  of  the  Whigs  to 
the  espousal  of  the  cause  of  liberty.  But  he  was 
evidently,  in  the  beginning,  a  strong  believer  in  the 
anti-slavery  possibilities  of  that  party.  And  no  won 
der.  For  if  the  party  in  Massachusetts  was  to  be 
relied  upon  in  that  regard,  was  to  be  taken  as  a  good 
example  of  the  anti-slavery  potentialities  of  the 
national  organization,  then,  surely  Sumner  had  rea 
son  for  his  expectation.  The  anti-slavery  element 
in  that  party  in  Massachusetts  had  become  an  import 
ant  factor  in  State  politics  since  the  agitation  preced 
ing  and  succeeding  the  annexation  of  Texas.  It  com 
prised  some  of  its  ablest  leaders  in  the  State,  and  it 
comprised  numerical  strength  as  well.  It  included 
such  veterans  as  John  Quincy  Adams,  Josiah  Quincy, 
and  John  G.  Palfrey  ;  such  young  and  aggressive 
spirits  as  Charles  Francis  Adams,  George  S.  Hillard, 
Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  and  John  A.  Andrew,  among  whom 
Sumner  was,  as  early  as  1846,  the  recognized  leader. 

True  to  his  double  design  to  let  no  opportunity 
slip  to  preach  the  doctrines  of  human  rights  to  his 
countrymen,  and  to  graft  anti-slavery  principles  upon 
the  Whig  party,  Sumner  seized  the  occasion  of  the 
Whigs  assembling  in  Convention  to  promote  the 
interests  of  freedom  in  those  regards.  Upon  the 
withdrawal  of  the  committee  appointed  to  report 
resolutions,  he  was  called  upon  for  a  speech.  The 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  PEGINS.  173 

speech  made  by  him  bears  the  marks  of  careful  prep 
aration,  and  was,  probably,  like  such  performances 
of  his,  fully  written  out  and  memorised  in  antici 
pation  of  the  opening.  There  was  doubtless,  no 
accident  between  the  call  and  the  speech.  The  call 
came  because  there  was  a  speech,  and  the  speech  was 
ready,  we  dare  say,  because  it  was  expected.  It  came 
as  an  expression  of  a  well-defined  anti-slavery  move 
ment  within  the  party  in  Massachusetts,  and  from  the 
lips  of  the  boldest,  and  the  most  eloquent  and  deter 
mined  of  its  younger  leaders  in  the  city  and  common 
wealth. 

It  was  Sumner's  second  political  speech,  and  the 
subject  of  it,  "Anti-Slavery  Duties  of  the  Whig 
Party,"  evinced  his  early  hopes  and  aims,  touching 
the  anti-slavery  possibilities  of  that  party.  No  utter 
ance  could  have  been  more  earnest.  It  was  like  the 
mouth  of  a  furnace  through  which  was  seen  the  con 
science,  the  will,  the  intellect  of  the  orator,  fervid 
and  flaming  over  the  fierce  breath  of  an  idea,  at  once 
imperious  and  supreme.  It  was  anti-slavery,  political 
and  moral,  incarnate.  From  its  opening  sentence,  in 
which  Sumner  expressed  his  intention  to  speak  of 
duties,  to  its  closing  one  in  which  "  Right,  Freedom, 
and  Humanity"  resounded  like  a  summons  to  battle, 
the  speech  glowed  and  blazed  with  the  white  heat  of 
a  master  thought,  a  master  purpose. 

The  Whig  party  must  be  true  to  its  name,  must 
stand  for  moral  ideas,  for  right,  freedom,  humanity, 
not  alone  for  the  Tariff,  Internal  Improvements,  and 
a  National  Bank.  The  Whigs  are  called  conservatives. 
Let  them  truly  conserve  the  everlasting  principles  of 
truth  and  liberty  in  the  manly  and  generous  spirit  of 


174  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  Declaration  of  Independence.  It  should  be  the 
party  of  freedom,  openly,  energetically.  It  should  be 
the  party  opposed  to  slavery,  openly,  energetically. 
The  time  has  gone  by  for  the  question,  what  has  the 
North  to  do  with  slavery  ?  Politically,  it  has  little  to  do 
with  anything  else.  Slavery  is  everywhere.  Under  the 
slave-representation  clause  of  the  Constitution  it  is 
seated  in  Congress.  It  plies  its  traffic  in  human  flesh 
in  the  District  of  Columbia  within  the  legislative 
jurisdiction  of  the  nation,  on  the  high  seas  under  the 
national  flag,  and  pursues  its  flying  victims  into  the 
sacred  precincts  of  Northern  freedom  ;  "  nay,  more, 
with  profane  hands  it  seizes  those  who  have  never 
known  the  name  of  slave,  freemen  of  the  North,  and 
dooms  them  to  irremediable  bondage.  It  insults  and 
expels  from  its  jurisdiction  honored  representatives 
of  Massachusetts,  seeking  to  secure  for  her  colored 
citizens  the  peaceful  safeguard  of  the  Union.  It 
assumes  at  pleasure  to  build  up  new  slave-holding 
States,  striving  perpetually  to  widen  its  area,  while 
professing  to  extend  the  area  of  freedom.  It  has 
brought  upon  the  country  war  with  Mexico,  with  its 
enormous  expenditures  and  more  enormous  guilt. 
By  the  spirit  of  union  among  its  supporters,  it  con 
trols  the  affairs  of  Government,  interferes  with  the 
cherished  interests  of  the  North,  enforcing  and  then 
refusing  protection  to  her  manufactures,  makes  and 
unmakes  Presidents,  usurps  to  itself  the  larger  por 
tion  of  all  offices  of  honor  and  profit,  both  in  the 
army  and  navy,  and  also  in  the  civil  department,  and 
stamps  upon  our  whole  country  the  character,  before 
the  world,  of  that  monstrous  anomaly  and  mockery,  a 
slave-holding  Republic,  with  the  living  truths  of  free- 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  175 

dom  on  its  lips  and  the  dark  mark  of  slavery  on  its 
brow." 

Massachusetts  must  wash  her  hands  of  all  complicity 
with  the  acts  of  this  great  criminal.  "  If  it  be  wrong 
to  hold  a  single  slave,  it  must  be  wrong  to  hold  many. 
If  it  be  wrong  for  an  individual  to  hold  a  slave,  it 
must  be  wrong  for  a  State.  If  it  be  wrong  for  a 
State  in  its  individual  capacity,  it  must  be  wrong  also 
in  association  with  other  States."  REPEAL  OF  SLAVERY 

UNDER  THE  CONSTITUTION  AND  LAWS  OF  THE  NATIONAL 

GOVERNMENT,  ergo,  should  be  the  rallying  cry  of  the 
Whigs  of  Massachusetts. 

Slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  in  the  Terri 
tories,  and  on  the  high  seas  under  the  national  colors, 
may  be  reached  by  Congress  constitutionally,  it  may 
be  reached  by  constitutional  amendment,  also. 
Slavery  under  the  Constitution  was  not  designed  by 
its  framers  to  endure  perpetually.  They  looked  for 
its  ultimate  extinction.  Let  Washington,  Jefferson, 
and  Franklin  speak  for  them.  Surely  they  earnestly 
desired  its  early  abolishment.  It  is  the  duty  of  the 
Whigs,  professing  the  principles  of  the  fathers,  to 
place  themselves  against  the  evil,  "  not  only  against  its 
further  extension,  but  against  its  longer  continuance  under 
the  Constitution  and  Laws  of  the  Union."  Emancipa 
tion  they  should  present  as  the  cardinal  object  of  our 
national  policy. 

The  party  must  not  content  itself  with  a  mere 
paper  opposition  to  slavery,  through  anti-slavery 
resolutions,  it  must  fight  the  monster  with  good  men 
and  true,  who  will  be,  not  Northern  men  with  South 
ern  principles,  nor  yet  Northern  men  under  Southern 
influences,  but  loyal  ever  to  Freedom  and  Humanity, 


176  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

brave  enough  to  stand  alone  with  Right.  There  are 
few  such  men  in  Congress.  Massachusetts  has  one, 
venerable  and  illustrious,  whose  aged  bosom  still  glows 
with  the  inextinguishable  fires  of  liberty.  Would 
that  all  might  join  him,  whom  all  well  know  to  be 
that  resolute  and  commanding  opponent  of  slavery 
on  the  floor  of  Congress,  John  Quincy  Adams.  Then, 
in  an  impassioned  passage,  the  young  orator  called 
upon  Webster  to  add  to  his  title  of  Defender  of  the 
Constitution  the  grander  one  of  Defender  of  Humanity, 
and  closed  thus  in  this  heroic  strain  : 

"  To  my  mind  it  is  clear  that  the  time  has  arrived 
when  the  Whigs  of  Massachusetts,  the  party  of  free 
dom,  owe  it  to  their  declared  principles,  to  their 
character  before  the  world,  and  to  conscience,  that 
they  should  place  themselves  firmly  on  this  honest 
ground.  They  need  not  fear  to  stand  alone.  They 
need  not  fear  separation  from  brethren  with  whom 
they  have  acted  in  concert.  Better  be  separated 
even  from  them  than  from  the  Right.  Massachusetts 
can  stand  alone,  if  need  be.  The  Whigs  of  Massa 
chusetts  can  stand  alone.  Their  motto  should  not  be 
'Our  party,  howsoever  bounded'  but  'Our  party, 
bounded  always  by  the  Right.'  They  must  recognize 
the  dominion  of  Right,  or  there  will  be  none  to  recog 
nize  the  dominion  of  the  party.  Let  us,  then,  in  Fan- 
euil  Hall,  beneath  the  images  of  our  fathers,  vow  per 
petual  allegiance  to  the  Right,  and  perpetual  hostility 
to  slavery.  Ours  is  a  noble  cause,  nobler  even  than 
that  of  our  fathers,  inasmuch  as  it  is  more  exalted  to 
struggle  for  the  freedom  of  others  than  for  our  own. 
The  love  of  Right,  which  is  the  animating  impulse  of 
our  movement,  is  higher  even  than  the  love  of  Free- 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  177 

dom.  But  Right,  Freedom,  and  Humanity  all  con 
cur  in  demanding  the  abolition  of  slavery." 

From  the  Cotton  wing  of  the  Whig  Convention 
the  speech  met  a  cold  and  significant  reception.  It  was 
Nathan  Appleton  who  remarked  to  the  orator  just  as 
he  stepped  from  the  platform,  "  A  good  speech  for 
Virginia,  but  out  of  place  here,"  to  which  Sumner 
quickly  responded,  "  If  good  for  Virginia,  it  is  good 
for  Boston,  as  we  have  our  responsibilities  for  slav 
ery/'  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  another  representative  of 
that  wing  of  the  Whigs,  at  the  call  of  the  convention, 
followed  Mr.  Sumner  immediately,  doubtless,  to 
voice  the  sentiments  of  the  party  contrariant  to  those 
of  the  address,  which  was  understood  to  embody  the 
views  and  aspirations  of  the  Conscience  wing  of  the 
Whigs.  Twelve  days  after  the  delivery  of  his  speech, 
Sumner  received  a  note  from  Mr.  Webster,  which 
indicated  pretty  plainly  that  he  was  not  disposed  to 
act  upon  the  appeal  to  him  by  adding  to  his  other 
titles  that  of  Defender  of  Humanity.  "  In  political 
affairs  we  happen  to  entertain,  at  the  present 
moment,"  so  ran  the  words  of  the  great  man's 
friendly  missive,  "a  difference  of  opinion  respecting 
the  relative  importance  of  some  of  the  political  ques 
tions  of  the  time,  and  take  a  different  view  of  the 
line  of  duty  most  fit  to  be  pursued  in  endeavors  to 
obtain  all  the  good  which  can  be  obtained  in  connec 
tion  with  certain  important  subjects."  Ah!  Sumner 
had  to  learn  by  repeated  failures  that  with  Webster 
and  the  Whigs  Right  and  Liberty  were  of  less 
importance  than  dollars  and  dividends. 

But  the  determined  purpose  of  Sumner  was  not  to 
be  deflected  so  much  as  the  tithe  of  a  hair  from  his 

12 


178  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

object,  either  by  the  cold  tone  of  Appleton  or  the 
crafty  words  of  Webster.  Sumner  clearly  perceived 
that  in  the  impending  political  struggle  with  slavery, 
everything  depended  on  the  kind  of  men  who  were 
put  forward  to  represent  the  North  in  Congress. 
They  were  not  to  be  sound  in  sentiment  only,  they 
were  to  possess  the  courage  of  their  convictions  also. 
Anti-slavery  resolutions  without  the  right  men 
behind  them  were  no  more  than  political  sounding 
brass,  and  tinkling  cymbals,  was  the  noise  of  thunder 
with  the  electric  bolt  left  out.  For  himself,  he 
wanted  the  thunder  to  arouse  the  conscience  of  the 
nation,  but  even  more,  he  wanted  its  bolts  to  smite 
the  giant  wrong.  Hence  his  insistence  upon  the 
selection  of  none  but  men  valiant  and  true,  as  the 
representatives  of  the  Whigs  in  Washington.  What 
he  strenuously  insisted  upon  as  a  member  of  the 
Whig  State  Convention,  he  sternly  enforced  immed 
iately  afterward  as  an  individual  Whig  elector  in  the 
case  of  Robert  C.  Winthrop  and  his  vote  in  Congress 
upon  the  wrongful  declaration  of  war  against 
Mexico." 

Mr.  Winthrop  was  the  bright,  particular  star  of  the 
younger  portion  of  the  Cotton  wing  of  the  Whigs  of 
Massachusetts.  He  had  been  early  chosen  to  repre 
sent  in  Congress,  the  party  in  Boston.  Amiable,  elo 
quent,  and  accomplished,  he  had  approved  himself  an 
honor  to  Massachusetts,  and  an  able  defender  of  her 
interests,  such  as  were  embraced  in  the  Bank  and 
Tariff  questions  of  the  day.  He  was  the  young  idol 
of  Beacon  and  State  streets,  and  to  all  appearances 
the  destined  successor  of  Webster  in  the  leadership 
of  the  great  Whig  classes  of  the  city  and  common- 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  179 

wealth.  He  had  not  been  unmindful  of  other  than 
their  material  interests,  it  must  also  be  recorded  to 
his  credit.  In  the  matter  of  the  treatment  of  colored 
seamen  in  sundry  Southern  ports,  his  manly  report 
upon  the  subject  in  Congress  will  doubtless  be 
recalled  by  the  reader,  and  also  Mr.  Sumner's  cordial 
commendation  of  it  besides.  Mr.  Winthrop  was  sin 
cerely  opposed  to  the  extension  of  slavery,  and  if 
mere  words  could  have  entitled  him  to  an-  anti-slav 
ery  character,  he  certainly  would  not  then  have  been 
found  wanting  in  that  regard. 

But  in  the  new  test  of  office  which  Sumner  had 
proposed  to  the  Whigs  in  convention  assembled, 
anti-slavery  words  were  deemed  important,  but  anti- 
slavery  action  was  rated  as  indispensable  to  official 
fitness.  The  men  chosen  to  represent  the  free  States 
in  Congress  "  must  not  be  Northern  men  with  South 
ern  principles,  nor  Northern  men  under  Southern 
influences,"  was  his  pungent  and  epigrammatic  char 
acterization  of  the  exacting  nature  of  the  new  test. 
In  a  public  letter,  addressed  to  Mr.  Winthrop  on 
October  26,  1846,  and  which  that  gentleman,  prob 
ably  never  forgot  or  forgave  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  author,  Sumner  applied  the  new  test  to  the  polit 
ical  conduct  of  the  representative  from  Boston  in  its 
relations  to  the  war  with  Mexico,  with  a  rigor  and 
energy  that  was  impressive,  almost  imposing. 

After  the  annexation  of  Texas  there  arose  between 
Mexico  and  the  United  States  a  question  of  disputed 
boundary,  Mexico  on  her  part  contending  that  the 
territorial  jurisdiction  of  Texas  extended  to  the  river 
Nueces,  while  the  United  States  insisted  that' the  Rio 
Grande  and  not  the  Nueces  formed  the  line  o 


l8o  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

ation  between  the  two  republics.  The  great  object 
sought  to  be  obtained  by  the  annexation  of  Texas 
was  the  acquisition  of  additional  slave  territory,  the 
more  the  better  from  the  standpoint  of  the  South. 
The  temptation  to  add  to  the  prize  won  by  it,  the 
land  included  between  the  Nueces  and  the  Rio 
Grande,  was  altogether  too  much  for  the  moral  re 
sistance  of  the  slave-power,  and  it  speedily  and 
greedily  succumbed  to  its  inordinate  lust  for  the  pos 
session  of  that  choice  cantle  of  Mexican  territory.  In 
January,  1846,  President  Polk  ordered  United  States 
soldiers,  under  the  command  of  General  Taylor,  to 
proceed  to  the  occupation  of  this  debatable  land. 
Their  occupancy  brought  on  a  collision  with  the 
troops  of  Mexico  and  virtually  began  the  war.  The 
United  States  was  plainly  the  aggressor,  not  Mexico, 
who  was  acting  wholly  on  the  defensive,  attempting 
to  repel  invaders  from  her  dominion.  Such  was  Sum- 
ner's  position. 

At  this  juncture  the  cry  was  craftily  raised  by  the 
emissaries  of  the  slave-power  that  the  American 
Army  of  Occupation  was  in  danger.  This  was  cal 
culated  to  excite  the  sympathy  and  patriotism  of  the 
nation,  irrespective  of  sections,  and  to  secure  the  sup 
port  of  Congress,  and  the  requisite  military  supplies 
for  the  successful  prosecution  of  the  scheme  of  Mexi 
can  spoliation.  Ably  assisted  by  the  President  the 
plan  for  hoodwinking  the  free  States  succeeded. 
Northern  representatives,  who  had  opposed  the  an 
nexation  of  Texas  as  a  slave  State,  were  duped  by 
this  adroit  appeal  to  their  love  of  country,  into  giving 
aid  and  encouragement  toward  the  conduct  of  a  war 
made  for  no  other  cause  than  the  augmentation  of 


THE  LONG  BATTLE  BEGINS.  l8l 

the  slave  soil  of  the  Union.  Mr.  Winthrop  belonged 
to  the  number  who  had  fallen  into  the  trap  laid 
for  them  by  the  slave-power.  He  had  expressed 
himself,  anent  the  annexation  of  Texas  as  a  slave 
State,  as  "  uncompromisingly  opposed  to  slavery,  or 
the  addition  of  another  inch  of  slave-holding  terri 
tory  to  the  nation,"  but  tamely  enough  afterward 
gave  his  vote  for  the  prosecution  to  its  "speedy  and 
successful  termination  "  of  a  war  waged  solely  for 
the  territorial  agrandizement  of  Texas  as  a  slave 
State.  In  that  act  he  had  proven  himself,  if  not  a 
Northe-n  man  with  Southern  principles,  then  a 
Northern  man  under  Southern  influences,  and,  there 
fore,  unworthy  of  the  confidence  of  the  friends  of 
freedom. 

Sumner's  letter  to  Mr.  Winthrop  was  a  sharp  ar 
raignment  of  him  as  a  public  servant  in  that  regard, 
and  a  stern  declaration  that  he  has  been  weighed 
and  found  wanting  in  loyalty  to  Truth,  Right,  Lib 
erty,  and  Humanity,  and  by  him  the  writer,  solemnly 
disowned  and  rejected  as  unworthy  longer  to  repre 
sent  the  Whigs  of  Boston  in  Congress. 

A  couple  of  extracts  from  this  letter,  which  was  an 
event  in  the  politics  of  Massachusetts  in  the  autumn 
of  1846,  will  convey  to  the  reader  an  idea  of  its  moral 
rigor  of  tone  and  energy  of  diction.  "  Such,  sir,  is 
the  Act  of  Congress  to  which  by  your  affirmative 
vote,"  so  runs  the  letter,  "  the  people  of  Boston  are 
made  parties.  Through  you  they  are  made  to  declare 
unjust  and  cowardly  war,  with  super  added  falsehood,  in 
the  cause  of  slavery.  Through  you  they  are  made  par 
takers  in  the  blockade  of  Vera  Cruz,  the  seizure  of 
California,  the  capture  of  Santa  Fe,  the  bloodshed  of 


l82  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Monterey.  It  were  idle  to  suppose  that  the  soldier 
or  officer  only  is  stained  by  this  guilt.  It  reaches  far 
back,  and  incarnadines  the  Halls  of  Congress;  nay, 
more,  through  you,  it  reddens  the  hands  of  your  con 
stituents  in  Boston.  Pardon  this  language.  Strong 
as  it  may  seem,  it  is  weak  to  express  the  aggravation 
of  this  Act.  Rather  than  lend  your  hand  to  this 
wickedness,  you  should  have  suffered  the  army  of  the 
United  States  to  pass  submissively  through  the  Cau- 
dine  Forks  of  Mexican  power — to  perish,  it  might  be, 
like  the  legions  of  Varus.  Their  bleached  bones,  in 
the  distant  valleys,  where  they  were  waging  unjust 
war,  would  not  tell  to  posterity  such  a  tale  of  igno 
miny  as  this  lying  Act  of  Congress. 

*  #  *  *  *  * 

"  Another  apology  is,  that  the  majority  of  the  Whig 
party  joined  with  you,  or,  as  it  has  been  expressed, 
that  Mr.  Winthrop  voted  with  all  the  rest  of  the 
weight  of  moral  character  in  Congress,  from  the  free 
States,  belonging  to  the  Whig  party,  not  included  in  the 
Massachusetts  delegation;  and  suggestions  are  made  in 
disparagement  of  the  fourteen  who  remained  un 
shaken  in  loyalty  to  Truth  and  Peace.  In  the  ques 
tion  of  Right  or  Wrong,  it  is  of  little  importance  that 
a  few  fallible  men,  constituting  what  is  called  a  ma 
jority,  are  all  of  one  mind.  Supple  or  insane  majori 
ties  are  found  in  every  age  to  sanction  injustice.  It 
was  a  majority  which  passed  the  Stamp  Act,  and 
Tea  Tax, — which  smiled  upon  the  persecution  of 
Galileo, — which  stood  about  the  stake  of  Servetus, 
—which  administered  the  hemlock  to  Socrates, — 
which  called  for  the  crucifixion  of  our  Lord.  These 

aiorities  cannot  make  us  hesitate  to  condemn  such 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  183 

acts,  and  their  authors.  Aloft  on  the  throne  of  God, 
and  not  below  in  the  footprints  of  a  trampling  multi 
tude,  are  the  sacred  rules  of  Right,  which  no  majori 
ties  can  displace  or  overturn.  And  the  question  re 
curs,  was  it  right  to  declare  unjust  and  cowardly  war, 
with  superadded  falsehood,  in  the  cause  of  slavery?" 
The  answer  of  the  letter  was  one  deep,  stern,  re 
sounding  NO. 

After  the  appearance  of  this  letter,  the  opposition 
in  Boston  to  the  return  of  Mr.  Winthrop  crystallized 
about  its  author  and  a  strong  disposition  arose  in 
the  city  to  run  Sumner  as  an  independent  candidate 
for  Congress.  With  this  end  in  view  he  was 
approached  again  and  again  by  those  dissatisfied 
with  the  record  of  Mr.  Winthrop  on  the  Mexican 
War,  to  allow  the  use  of  his  name  as  a  candidate. 
But,  unwilling  to  enter  public  life,  and  to  expose  him 
self  to  the  imputation  of  having  been  actuated  by 
selfish  motives  in  writing  the  letter,  he  repeatedly 
declined  to  let  himself  be  nominated.  But  his  fitness 
was  so  evident  and  supreme,  that  the  friends  of  free 
dom  at  a  mass-meeting  in  Tremont  Temple  on  Octo 
ber  29th,  and  during  his  absence  in  Maine  filling  lec 
ture  engagements,  nominated  him,  notwithstanding 
his  repeated  refusals  to  permit  himself  to  be  placed 
in  nomination,  as  an  independent  candidate  for  Con 
gress. 

Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  called  the  meeting  to  order,  and 
Charles  Francis  Adams  was  chosen  to  preside.  The 
high  estimation  in  which  Mr.  Sumner  was  held  at  the 
time  in  the  city  may  be  gathered  from  the  report  of 
the  committee  appointed  to  draft  resolutions  and 
name  a  candidate,  of  which  John  A.  Andrew,  then 

r> 


184  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

young  member  of  the  Suffolk  bar,  was  chairman. 
.The  last  of  a  series  of  resolutions  reported  by  the 
committee  reads  as  follows  : 

"  Resolved,  That  we  recommend  to  the  citizens  of 
of  this  district  as  a  candidate  for  representative  in  the 
National  Congress  a  man  raised  by  his  pure  character 
above  reproach,  whose  firmness,  intelligence,  dis 
tinguished  ability,  rational  patriotism,  manly  inde 
pendence,  and  glowing  love  of  liberty  and  truth 
entitle  him  to  the  unbought  confidence  of  his  fellow- 
citizens— CHARLES  SUMNER,  of  Boston— fitted 
to  adorn  any  station,  always  found  on  the  side  of  the 
Right,  and  especially  worthy  at  the  present  crisis  to 
represent  the  interests  of  the  city  and  the  cardinal 
principles  of  Truth,  Justice,  Liberty,  and  Peace,  which 
have  not  yet  died  out  from  the  hearts  of  her  citizens." 

The  nominee  returned  to  Boston  late  the  next 
evening,  and  on  learning  that  he  had  been  put  in 
nomination  for  Congress,  penned  at  once  and  gave 
to  the  public  a  positive  and  explicit  withdrawal 
of  his  name.  Dr.  Howe  was  thereupon  selected  as  a 
candidate  instead,  and  consented  "  to  stand  and  be 
shot  at,"  under  the  circumstances.  Sumner  threw  him 
self  into  the  canvass  with  his  customary  earnestness 
and  energy,  giving  to  his  friend  at  a  public  meeting  in 
Tremont  Temple  on  the  night  of  November  5th,  an 
enthusiastic  support  in  a  learned  and  elaborate 
speech  on  slavery  and  the  Mexican  War,  in  which  he 
again  reviewed  Mr.  Winthrop's  political  conduct  with 
scathing  effect,  declaring  him  unfit  to  "  represent  the 
feeling  palpitating  in  Massachusetts'  bosom,"  and  so 
often  expressed  by  her  legislature  on  the  subject  of 
slavery.  In  that  address  he  voiced  a  truth  which 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  185 

was  vital  then  and  is  vital  now.  "  In  his  vote  for  the 
Mexican  War,"  Sumner  pointed  out  in  his  speech, 
"  Mr.  Winthrop  was  not  a  Whig.  He  then  left  the 
party,  for  surely,"  and  herein  lies  the  truth  vital  now 
as  then,  "  for  surely  the  party  is  not  where  numbers 
prevail,  but  where  its  principles  are  recognized." 

Although  Mr.  Winthrop  was  reflected  by  a  large 
majority  at  the  polls,  still  the  more  than  thirteen 
hundred  votes  which  were  cast  for  Dr.  Howe  was  an 
auspicious  omen  of  future  advances  of  the  political 
revolution  which  had  begun  to  assume  moral  and 
numerical  importance  in  the  old  Bay  State,  in  regard 
to  slavery.  "  Even,  if  we  seem  to  fail  in  this  elec 
tion,"  Sumner  had  said  in  his  address,  supporting 
Dr.  Howe's  candidacy,  "  we  shall  not  fail  in  reality. 
The  influence  of  this  effort  will  help  to  awaken  and 
organize  that  powerful  public  opinion  by  which  this 
war  will  at  last  be  arrested."  It  did  not  arrest  the  war, 
but  it  did  help  to  awaken  and  organize  that  powerful 
public  sentiment  by  which  the  spread  of  slavery  to 
the  new  national  territories  acquired  at  the  close  of 
the  war  was  at  last  arrested. 

Sumner's  opposition  to  the  "  unjust  and  cowardly 
war  in  the  cause  of  slavery,"  as  he  stigmatized  the 
Mexican  war,  carried  him  before  the  Supreme  Court 
of  Massachusetts,  in'  January,  1847,  with  a  view  to 
test  the  validity  of  enlistments  in  the  regiment  of  vol 
unteers  for  the  war  raised  in  that  State.  Before  the 
departure  of  the  regiment  for  the  field  of  operations, 
several  of  the  younger  volunteers,  repenting  their 
precipitate  action,  applied  through  counsel  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  commonwealth  for  their  dis 
charge  because  of  the  invalidity  of  their  enlistments. 


1 86  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

At  the  hearing,  Sumner,  who  appeared  for  one  of  the 
repentant  recruits,  attacked  the  proceedings  by  which 
the  regiment  was  organized,  denying  in  the  first 
place  that  the  Act  of  Congress,  under  which  they 
were  had,  was  in  accordance  with  the  Constitution;  in 
the  second  place  that  the  enlistments  were  in  con 
formity  to  the  Act,  and  in  the  third  place  that  his 
client,  being  a  minor,  was  bound  by  his  contract  of 
enlistment.  The  Court  decided  against  Sumner  on 
his  first  and  second  points,  but  in  his  favor  on  the 
third,  and  accordingly  discharged  his  client  from  his 
military  engagement. 

This  determined  opposition  to  the  war,  Sumner 
followed  up  a  month  later  in  an  effective  speech  in 
Feneuil  Hall  demanding  the  immediate  withdrawal 
of  the  American  troops  from  Mexico  and  the  cessa 
tion  of  hostilities.  In  his  regard,  his  country  was 
wrong  and  Mexico  right.  Therefore,  it  was  the  duty 
of  his  country  to  retreat  at  once  from  the  wrong  it 
was  committing.  "  Few  if  any  of  the  conspicuous 
advocates  for  the  maintenance  of  this  war  could  hes 
itate,"  said  he,  "  if  found  wrong  in  any  private  trans 
action,  to  retreat  at  once.  .  .  .  Such  should  be  the 
conduct  ot  the  nation  ;  for  it  cannot  be  said  too  often, 
that  the  general  rules  of  morals  are  the  same  for 
individuals  and  States." 

Sumner  during  the  year  1847,  not  only  attacked 
slavery  directly  from  the  political  platform,  but  by  a 
literary  stratagem  brought  his  guns  to  bear  upon  it 
from  the  lecture  platform  as  well.  A  lecture  by  him, 
however  finished  and  eloquent,  on  the  subject  of 
slavery  in  this  country  would  not  have  been  tolerated 
by  the  lecture  lyceums  before  whom  he  was  a  fre- 


THE    LONG    BATTLE    BEGINS.  187 

quent  speaker.  But  what  was  not  permitted  to  him 
to  accomplish  by  direction,  he  achieved  by  indirection, 
and  White  Slavery  in  the  Barbary  States,  which 
formed  the  title  and  theme  of  an  admirable  anti-slav 
ery  discourse  delivered  by  him  in  Boston,  and  in 
many  places  in  Massachusetts  before  popular  audi 
ences.  In  exposing  the  barbarism  of  white  slavery 
in  Africa,  he  exposed  the  barbarism  of  black  slavery 
in  America  ;  and  in  arousing  among  his  hearers  sym 
pathy  for  the  victims  of  man's  inhumanity  to  man  in 
foreign  lands,  he  was  exciting  it  also  for  those 
unhappy  wretches  of  oppression  at  home.  In  breed 
ing  hatred  and  abhorrence  of  the  one,  he  was,  in  fine, 
breeding  it  at  the  same  time  of  the  other  also. 

"  From  such  a  scene,"  exclaimed  the  lecturer  at  the 
end  of  a  long  chapter  of  horrors;  "  from  such  a  scene 
we  gladly  turn  away,  while,  in  the  sincerity  of  our 
hearts,  we  give  our  sympathies  to  the  unhappy  suf 
ferers.  Fain  would  we  avert  their  fate  ;  fain  would 
we  destroy  the  system  of  bondage  that  has  made 
them  wretched  and  their  masters  cruel.  And  yet  we 
must  not  judge  with  harshness  the  Algerian  slave 
owner,  who,  reared  in  a  religion  of  slavery,  learned  to 
regard  Christians  guilty  of  a  skin  not  colored  like  his 
own  as  lawful  prey,  and  found  sanctions  for  his  con 
duct  in  the  injunctions  of  the  Koran,  the  customs  of 
his  country,  and  the  instinctive  dictates  of  an  imag 
ined  self-interest.  It  is,  then,  the  peculiar  institution 
which  we  are  aroused  to  execrate,  rather  than  the 
Algerian  slave-masters  glorying  in  its  influence,  nor 
perceiving  their  foul  disfigurement."  The  blows  of 
the  hero  was  beginning  to  fall,  fast  and  furious,  on 
the  many-headed  scourge  of  the  land. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS. 

DEFEATED  in  the  Whig  State  Convention  of  1846, 
Sumner  carried  his  cause  directly  to  the  people. 
Perhaps,  they  could  put  an  anti-slavery  soul  into  the 
Whig  body.  Thenceforth  his  hammering  on  the 
anvil  of  public  opinion  was  incessant.  The  sparks 
began  to  fly  fast  and  far.  Gloriously  in  earnest  was 
the  man.  He  glowed  and  flamed  with  an  unconquer 
able  spirit  and  purpose.  Such  tremendous  ardor,  as 
was  his,  became  contagious.  From  mind  to  mind 
the  kindling  frenzy  passed,  until  in  time  Massachu 
setts  was  alight  and  ablaze  from  the  hills  to  the  sea. 
Now,  as  we  have  seen,  his  fulcrum  was  the  Mexican 
War,  now  the  lack  of  an  anti-slavery  backbone  in  a 
national  statesman  like  Winthrop,  now  it  was  "White 
Slavery  in  the  Barbary  States."  With  the  strong  lever 
of  humanity  he  was  steadily  tilting  to  its  downfall  a 
world  of  pro-slavery  prejudice  and  sympathy  in  the 
Bay  State.  From  the  platform,  at  the  bar,  through 
the  press,  he  was  scattering  burning  coals,  seeds  of 
high  resolves.  The  coals  were  thawing  the  ice 
from  the  popular  heart,  the  seeds  were  to  spring  up 
up  in  an  abundant  crop  of  anti-slavery  zeal  and 
action. 

Sumner  expected  that  this  rising  tide  of  opposition 
to    slavery  would    take   one    of   two    courses,  either 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  189 

through  the  old  Whig  channel,  or,  if  obstructed,  then 
by  a  new  one  which  it  would  make  for  itself.  This 
expectation  was  not  disappointed.  The  swelling 
flood  sought,  at  first,  to  pour  itself  through  the  exist 
ing  political  conduit.  The  attempt  was  not  success 
ful.  With  accumulated  strength  and  volume  it  was 
ultimately  thrown  back  upon  the  second  way. 

The  young  anti-slavery  leader,  at  a  meeting  held 
in  Boston,  September  15,  1847,  f°r  tne  purpose  of 
choosing  delegates  to  the  annual  Whig  State  Conven 
tion,  in  anticipation  of  the  acquisition  of  new  national 
territory,  at  the  close  of  the  war  with  Mexico,  tried 
without  avail  to  commit  the  meeting  to  the  demand 
"that  there  shall  be  neither  slavery  nor  involuntary 
servitude  therein,  otherwise  than  for  the  punishment 
of  crime."  Undiscouraged  by  this  fresh  proof  of  the 
incorrigibility  of  the  Whigs  in  regard  to  slavery, 
Sumner,  at  the  head  of  the  Whig  delegation  to  the 
State  Convention,  made  in  the  Convention  a  final 
effort  to  bring  the  Whig  party  to  an  avowal  of  anti- 
slavery  principles. 

The  Convention  was,  hopelessly,  split  into  two 
hostile  wings,  designated  in  the  political  nomen 
clature  of  the  day,  Cotton  Whigs  and  Conscience 
Whigs.  The  former,  for  the  sake  of  material  interests, 
were  for  pursuing  the  old-time  policy  of  silence  and 
oblivion  on  the  slavery  question  ;  while  the  latter,  for 
the  sake  of  freedom,  were  for  the  adoption  of  an 
anti-slavery  test  in  the  selection  of  candidates,  by  the 
next  National  Whig  Convention  for  the  Presidency  and 
Vice-presidency  of  the  United  States.  A  resolution 
was  introduced  recommending  Webster,  who  was 
present  to  try,  doubtless,  upon  the  two  warring  wings 


igo  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

of  the  Convention  the  spell  of  his  imposing  influ 
ence  and  eloquence,  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency. 
But,  nothing  daunted,  the  Conscience  Whigs,  through 
John  G.  Palfrey,  moved  the  following  amendment  to 
the  resolution,  viz.:  "Resolved,  That  the  Whigs  of 
Massachusetts  will  support  no  men  for  the  offices  of 
President  and  Vice-president  but  such  as  are  known 
by  their  acts  or  declared  opinions  to  be  opposed  to 
the  extension  of  slavery."  This  amendment  brought 
on  a  sharp  engagement  between  the  two  hostile 
camps  of  the  Convention.  Conspicuous  in  this 
struggle,  on  the  one  side,  were  Robert  C.  Winthrop 
and  John  C.  Gray,  and  on  the  other  were  Palfrey, 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  and  Charles  Sumner. 

Sumner's  speech  in  support  of  the  amendment  was 
startlingly  bold  and  defiant  of  consequences.  "  Alone 
in  the  company  of  nations,"  he  thundered,  "  our 
country  assumes  the  championship  of  this  hateful 
institution.  Far  away  in  the  East,  at  '  the  gateways 
of  the  day,'  by  the  sacred  waters  of  fhe  Ganges,  in 
effeminate  India,  slavery  is  condemned  ;  in  Con 
stantinople,  queenly  seat  of  the  most  powerful 
Mahometan  empire,  where  barbarism  still  mingles 
with  civilization,  the  Ottoman  sultan  brands  it  with 
the  stigma  of  disapprobation  ;  the  Barbary  States  of 
Africa  are  changed  to  Abolitionists ;  from  the  un 
tutored  ruler  of  Morocco  comes  the  declaration  of 
his,  stamped  in  the  formal  terms  of  a  treaty,  that  the 
very  name  of  slavery  may  perish  from  the  minds  of 
men  ;  and  only  recently  from  the  Bey  of  Tunis  has 
proceeded  that  noble  act  by  which,  *  for  the  glory  of 
God,  and  to  distinguish  man  from  the  brute  creation,' 
—I  quote  his  own  words — he  decreed  its  total  aboli- 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  IQI 

tion  throughout  his  dominions.  Let  Christian 
America  be  taught  by  these  despised  Mahometans. 
God  forbid  that  our  Republic — '  heir  of  all  the  ages, 
in  the  foremost  files  of  time  ' — should  adopt  anew  the 
barbarism  and  cruelty  they  have  renounced  or  con 
demned." 

But  coming  directly  to  the  point  of  the  debate,  noth 
ing  could  exceed  the  fearlessness  of  his  tone.  "  On 
the  present  occasion,"  he  said,  "we  can  only  declare 
our  course.  But  this  should  be  in  language  sternly 
expressive  of  our  determination.  It  will  not  be  enough 
merely  to  put  forth  opinions  in  well-couched  phrase, 
and  add  yet  other  resolutions  to  the  hollow  words 
which  have  passed  into  the  limbo  of  things  lost  on 
earth.  We  must  give  to  our  opinions  that  edge  and 
force  which  they  can  have  only  from  the  declared 
determination  to  abide  by  them  at  all  times.  We 
must  carry  them  to  the  ballot-box,  and  bring  our  can 
didates  to  their  standard.  The  recent  constitution  of 
Louisiana,  to  discourage  duelling,  disqualifies  all 
engaged  in  a  duel  from  holding  any  civil  office.  The 
Whigs  of  Massachusetts,  so  far  as  in  them  lies,  must 
pronounce  a  similar  sentence  of  disqualification 
upon  all  not  known  to  be  against  the  extension  of 
slavery.  .  . 

"  I  urge  this  course  at  the  present  moment  from 
deep  conviction  of  its  importance.  And,  be  assured, 
sir,  whatever  the  final  determination  of  this  Conven 
tion,  there  are  many  here  to-day  will  never  yield 
support  to  any  candidate,  for  Presidency  or  Vice- 
presidency,  who  is  not  known  to  be  against  the  exten 
sion  of  slavery,  even  though  he  have  freshly  received 
the  sacramental  unction  of  a  *  regular  nomination.' 


IQ2  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

We  cannot  say  with  detestable  morality,  '  Our  party, 
right  or  wrong."  The  time  has  gone  by  when  gentle 
men  can  expect  to  introduce  among  us  the  discipline 
of  the  camp.  Loyalty  to  principle  is  higher  than 
loyalty  to  party.  .  .  .  Far  above  any  flickering 
light  or  battle-lantern  of  party  is  the  everlasting  Sun 
of  Truth,  in  whose  beams  are  the  duties  of  men." 

The  amendment  was  defeated.  The  Cotton  wing  of 
the  Convention  triumphed  in  a  show  of  hands.  Alto 
gether  too  strong  for  the  Whig  bottles,  proved  the 
anti-slavery  wine.  Sumner's  early  hope  that  his 
party  would  become  the  party  of  freedom  and  human 
ity,  was  now  wholly  quenched.  After  this  he  entered 
no  more  a  Whig  State  Convention.  For  he  saw 
clearly  enough  then  that  the  Whigs  were  joined  to 
their  two  masters,  Webster  and  Slavery.  The  Cotton 
wing  of  the  party  in  Massachusetts  was  devoted  to 
the  former,  and  he  in  turn  was  given  up,  body  and 
soul,  to  the  service  of  self  and  the  dear  Union.  From 
neither  was  humanity  able,  thenceforth,  to  extract  a 
single  generous  word  or  act. 

Sumner  had  now  approached  a  crisis  in  his  life.  He 
was  about  to  break  away  from  a  party  which  com 
prised  the  culture  and  wealth  of  the  city  and  State  to 
which  he  belonged.  But  the  commanding  ability  of 
the  young  orator  and  leader  had  been  so  signally  dis 
played  during  the  two  previous  years,  in  those  notable 
orations,  "  The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations,"  and  "  The 
Scholar,  the  Jurist,  the  Artist,  the  Philanthropist," 
as  well  as  in  other  capital  performances — political, 
academic,  and  popular — that  even  this  powerful  party 
with  Webster  at  its  head,  could  not  now  sneer  or 
frown  him  down.  Sumner  was  already  famous,  and 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  193 

the  centre  of  a  fast-widening  influence  in  Massachu 
setts.  Such  a  man  as  he  was  must  have  seemed  an 
utter  enigma  to  one  like  Webster.  The  moral  passion 
and  exaltation  which  distinguished  the  younger 
leader,  the  elder  had  long  extinguished  in  himself. 
But  the  celestial  fires  which  ambition  had  smothered 
in  the  breast  of  Webster,  Sumner  was  fanning  to  a 
fierce  heat  on  his  own  heart's  altar.  What  the  former 
refused  to  undertake,  destiny  called  the  latter  to 
accomplish*. 

Summer's  public  and  formal  renunciation  of  his 
relations  with  the  Whig  party  was  made  in  the  latter 
part  of  June,  1848,  following  the  action  of  the 
National  Convention  of  that  party  in  Philadelphia 
during  the  first  of  the  month,  in  nominating  a  South 
ern  slaveholder  for  the  Presidency.  Both  of  the  old 
parties  through  their  national  conventions  this  year, 
demonstrated  their  utter  worthlessness  as  anti- 
slavery  instruments.  Nothing  in  that  regard  could 
be  expected  from  the  Democratic  organization,  since 
in  deference  to  the  South,  it  placed  in  nomination 
for  the  Presidency  a  Northern  man  who  had  recanted 
his  free  State  opinions  on  the  Wilmot  Proviso. 
Lewis  Cass,  if  not  exactly  a  Northern  man  with 
Southern  principles,  was,  at  least,  a  Northern  man 
under  Southern  influences,  and,  therefore,  according 
to  Sumner's  well-known  political  test,  was  not  fit  to 
represent  the  free  States  in  the  National  Government, 
much  less  to  be  chosen  by  their  votes  as  the  head  of 
that  Government. 

But  the  Whigs,  in  their  selection  of  General  Tay 
lor,  showed  an  even  more  shameless  subserviency  to 
Southern  influences.  This  action  advertised  the 


194  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

friends  of  freedom,  that  thenceforth  they  need  ex 
pect  no  anti-slavery  performance  from  that  party, 
which  was  the  signal  for  secession  of  the  more  de 
termined  of  its  anti-slavery  membership,  and  the 
starting  of  a  new  movement  devoted  to  uncompro 
mising  opposition  to  the  farther  spread  of  slavery  in 
the  Union.  Two  Massachusetts  delegates  to  the 
National  Convention  raised  boldly  in  that  body  the 
standard  of  revolt.  Charles  Allen,  and  Henry  Wil 
son,  upon  the  nomination  of  General  Taylor,  declared 
their  refusal  to  support  him  as  a  candidate  for  the 
Presidency.  And  so  the  great  Whig  bolt  of  forty-four 
years  ago  was  inaugurated  before  the  adjournment  of 
the  Convention. 

The  reception  of  the  news  of  the  nomination  in 
Massachusetts  verified  the  threatening  prediction  of 
Sumner  made  the  previous  autumn  to  the  Whig  State 
Convention,  "  that  there  are  many  here  to-day  who 
will  never  yield  support  to  any  candidate,  for  Presi 
dency  or  Vice-Presidency,  who  is  not  known  to  be 
against  the  extension  of  slavery,  even  though  he  have 
freshly  received  the  sacramental  unction  of  a  *  regular 
nomination.'  "  Nothing  was  now  left  to  such  people, 
Sumner  among  them,  who  desired  to  operate  politi 
cally  against  the  national  evil,  but  to  proceed  to  the 
organization  of  a  new  party  to  that  end.  The  state 
of  the  North  on  the  slavery  question  indicated 
plainly  enough  that  the  time  was  ripe  for  organized 
resistance  to  the  extension  and  to  the  increasing  pre 
tensions  of  the  peculiar  institution  of  the  South. 
This  was  particularly  true  of  Massachusetts,  where, 
after  the  Whig  fiasco,  a  call  was  promptly  issued  for 
a  convention,  to  found  a  new  party  of  freedom. 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  195 

This  convention  met  in  Worcester,  June  28,  1848. 
There  was  no  hall  in  the  city  large  enough  to  accom 
modate  the  excited  and  enthusiastic  multitude,  who 
had,  in  response  to  the  call,  assembled  from  all  parts  of 
the  State  to  the  number  of  about  five  thousand  souls, 
on  fire  with  hatred  of  slavery.  It  was  on  the  Common, 
in  the  open  air  that  the  founding  of  the  Free  Soil  party, 
in  Massachusetts,  proceeded  that  memorable  June  day. 
The  speeches  of  Samuel  Hoar,  who  was  made  president 
of  the  permanent  organization  of  the  mass  Conven 
tion,  of  Henry  Wilson,  Charles  Allen,  Joshua  Leavitt, 
Joshua  R.  Giddings,  J.  C.  Lovejoy,  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  of  Sumner,  and  others,  rose,  in  the  deter 
mined  manhood  of  them  to  the  level  of  the  emerg 
ency.  Old  party  ties  were,  then  and  there,  renounced 
by  each  of  the  speakers,  and  by  none  more  distinctly 
and  forcibly  than  by  Charles  Sumner,  who,  beyond 
all  the  others,  embodied  in  himself  the  stern  spirit 
and  purpose  of  the  anti-slavery  revolution,  spreading 
through  the  free  States,  and  manifesting  itself  in  in 
dependent  political  action.  "  A  party  which  re 
nounces  its  sentiments,"  he  said,  firmly,  "  must  expect 
to  be  renounced.  In  the  coming  contest  I  wish  it 
understood  that  I  belong  to  the  party  of  Freedom,— 
to  that  party  which  plants  itself  on  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  and  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States." 

He  was  one  of  the  first  to  perceive  the  necessity  of  a 
freedom-power  to  match  and  master  the  slave-power. 
"  The  lovers  of  freedom,"  said  he  at  this  time,  "from 
both  parties,  and  irrespective  of  all  party  associa 
tions,  must  unite,  and  by  new  combination,  congenial 
to  the  Constitution,  oppose  both  candidates.  This 


196  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

will  he  the  FREEDOM-POWER,  whose  single  ob 
ject  will  be  to  resist  the  SLAVE-POWER.  We  will 
put  them  face  to  face  and  let  them  grapple.  Who 
can  doubt  the  result?" 

He  refused  to  choose  between  two  evils.  He  had 
no  choice  when  such  were  presented  to  him.  He 
must  needs  reject  both.  Both  Cass  and  Taylor  were 
evils,  and,  as  such,  he  rejected  them.  He  admitted, 
however,  that  "  There  are  occasions  of  political  diff 
erence  .  .  .  when  it  may  become  expedient  to  vote 
for  a  candidate  who  does  not  completely  represent 
our  sentiments.  There  are  matters  legitimately 
within  the  range  of  expediency  and  compromise. 
The  tariff  and  the  currency  are  of  this  character. 
If  a  candidate  differs  from  me  on  these,  more  or  less, 
I  may  yet  vote  for  him.  But  the  question  before  the 
country  is  of  another  character.  This  will  not  admit 
of  compromise.  It  is  not  within  the  domain  of  expe 
diency.  To  be  wrong  on  this  is  to  be  wholly  wrong." 

Replying  to  the  taunt  that  to  vote  for  a  third  party 
candidate,  was  to  throw  away  votes  and  to  fail,  he 
exclaimed  in  words  which  must  long  have  burned  in 
the  hearts  of  his  hearers  :  "  Fail,  sir  !  No  honest, 
earnest  effort  in  a  good  cause  can  fail.  It  may  not 
be  crowned  with  the  applause  of  man  ;  it  may  not 
seem  to  touch  the  goal  of  immediate  worldly  success, 
which  is  the  end  and  aim  of  so  much  of  life.  But  it 
is  not  lost.  It  helps  to  strengthen  the  weak  with 
new  virtue — to  arm  the  irresolute  with  proper  energy 
—to  animate  all  with  devotion  to  duty,  which  in  the 
end  conquers  all.  Fail  !  Did  the  martyrs  fail,  when 
with  precious  blood  they  sowed  the  seed  of  the 
Church  ?  Did  the  discomfited  champions  of  freedom 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  197 

fail,  who  have  left  those  names  in  history  that  can 
never  die  ?  Did  the  three  hundred  Spartans  fail, 
when,  in  the  narrow  pass,  they  did  not  fear  to  brave 
the  innumerable  Persian  hosts,  whose  very  arrows 
darkened  the  sun  ?  Overborne  by  numbers,  crushed 
to  earth,  they  left  an  example  greater  far  than  any 
victory.  And  this  is  the  least  we  can  do.  Our  exam 
ple  will  be  the  mainspring  of  triumph  hereafter.  It 
will  not  be  the  first  time  in  history  that  the  hosts  of 
slavery  have  outnumbered  the  champions  of  free 
dom.  But  where  is  it  written  that  slavery  finally 
prevailed  ?  " 

At  the  close  of  the  mass  convention  at  Worcester, 
the  new  political  movement  may  be  said  to  have  been 
fully  launched  upon  the  tide  of  public  opinion  in 
Massachusetts.  That  it  had  come  to  stay,  all  the 
auguries  of  the  times  were  loudly  prophesying  and 
proclaiming.  That  it  would  finally  prevail  seemed 
to  a  soul  like  Sumner  a  foregone  conclusion.  His 
confidence  on  that  day  in  regard  to  the  immediate 
results  it  was  destined  to  produce,  subsequent  events 
amply  justified.  It  "  will  sweep  the  heart-strings  of 
the  people,"  he  declared.  "  It  will  smite  all  the 
chords  with  a  might  to  draw  forth  emotions  such  as 
no  political  struggle  ever  awakened  before." 

On  the  9th  of  August  following  the  great  anti-slav 
ery  demonstration  at  Worcester,  a  convention  of  the 
free  States,  held  at  Buffalo,  nominated  for  the  Presi 
dency  and  the  Vice-Presidency  respectively,  on  a 
Free  Soil  platform,  Martin  Van  Buren,  of  New  York, 
and  Charles  Francis  Adams,  of  Massachusetts.  "We 
inscribe  on  our  banners,"  so  ran  a  resolve  of  the  Buf 
falo  Convention,  "  Free  Soil,  Free  Speech,  Free  Labor, 


198  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

and  Free  Men  ;  and  under  it  will  fight  on  and  fight 
ever,  until  a  triumphant  victory  shall  reward  our 
exertions."  Those  words  struck  all  the  chords  in  the 
breasts  of  thousands  at  the  North,  became  the 
watchword  of  the  stirring  campaign,  inaugurated  by 
the  new  party  of  freedom  upon  the  adjournment  of 
the  convention. 

The  political  antecedents  of  the  Buffalo  nominees 
betokened,  as  nothing  else  could,  the  wide  trend 
which  che  new  movement  was  taking.  Van  Buren 
had  been  the  foremost  and  most  powerful  of  the  vet 
eran  chieftains  of  the  Democratic  party,  and  Adams 
was  one  of  the  most  influential  and  able  of  the  younger 
leaders  of  the  Massachusetts  Whigs.  It  is  well  known 
that  Webster,  himself,  hesitated  for  a  while,  with 
divided  mind,  between  the  new  party  of  freedom,  and 
the  old  Whig  organization,  with  Zachary  Taylor  at 
its  head.  Like  Van  Buren  in  respect  of  the  Demo 
cratic  nomination,  he  had  set  his  soul  on  the  Whig 
nomination.  •  They  were  both  in  obedience  to  the 
Southern  wings  of  their  respective  parties,  pushed 
from  their  stools  and  others,  more  satisfactory 
to  the  slave-power,  seated  in  their  places.  Dis 
appointed  ambition  and  a  thirst  for  revenge  hur 
ried  Van  Buren  into  actual  revolt,  and  drove  Web 
ster  nearly  to  the  same  length,  in  opposition  to  the 
candidacy  of  General  Taylor.  The  supreme  and  cal 
culating  selfishness  of  the  latter,  however,  conquered 
finally  the  fierce  passion  for  revenge,  and  saved  him 
for  four  sorry  years  to  the  service  of  the  Whigs  and 
their  imperious  master,  the  slave  despotism  of  the 
nation. 

If  Webster,  mutinous  because  of  his  personal  de- 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  199 

feat,  stood  irresolute  during  a  few  sullen  weeks  be 
tween  the  camp  of  the  new  movement  and  that  of  the 
Whigs,  there  were  thousands  of  his  old  friends  and 
followers,  mutinous  because  of  the  defeat  of  Liberty, 
who  betrayed  no  irresolution,  but  ranged  themselves 
promptly  under  the  banner  flung  to  the  breeze  by  the 
Free  Soil  party,  as  the  great  meeting  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  on  August  22,  called  to  ratify  the  nominations 
of  the  Buffalo  Convention,  grandly  attested.  Over 
this  meeting  Charles  Sumner  was  fitly  chosen  to  pre 
side.  To  him,  Webster  failing  them,  the  hopes  of 
anti-slavery  Massachussetts  turned  for  leadership,  as 
to  no  other  man,  in  the  mighty  political  struggle  with 
the  slave-power  then  impending.  Against  a  combi 
nation,  resolute  and  uncompromising,  the  moral  in 
stincts  of  Massachusetts  were  reaching  out  toward  a 
champion,  not  less  determined  and  unyielding. 

Sumner's  opening  speech  at  the  ratification  meet 
ing  furnished  additional  proof,  if,  indeed,  such  were 
needed,  that  if  the  hour  of  the  irrepressible  conflict 
in  the  Bay  State  had  struck,  God  had  provided  the 
man  for  the  crisis.  There  was  a  moral  force  and  mo 
mentum  of  purpose,  of  the  right,  about  him,  which 
rendered  him  singular,  preeminent, amongthepolitical 
opponents  of  slavery,  not  alone  in  Massachusetts  but 
throughout  the  free  States.  Whatever  he  did,  wher 
ever  he  appeared,  whenever  he  spoke,  whether  directly 
on  the  subject  of  slavery,  or  on  some  other  topic,  he 
gave  more  and  more  now  an  impression  as  of  a  man 
possessed,  burning  up,  with  the  fires  of  one  supreme 
idea.  There  now  began  to  run  through  all  his  polit 
ical  utterances,  a  sameness  of  thought,  a  repetition  of 
argument  and  historical  reference  and  illustration,  an 


200  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

impressive,  an  almost  imposing,  uniformity  of  passion 
and  power.  All  his  knowledge  of  universal  history, 
all  his  vast  readings  in  the  world  of  letters,  all  his 
immense  acquisitions  as  a  jurist,  seemed  now  but  so 
many  splendid  tributaries  to  feed  and  serve  this  one 
idea,  to  raise  the  strong  current  of  his  love  and  devo 
tion  to  the  level  of  its  utmost  demands.  By  the  side 
of  this  one  idea,  all  other  questions  sank  from  his 
view.  He  recognized  but  one  question  before  the 
country,  calling  for  settlement,  and  that  was  his  cause, 
the  cause  of  humanity.  "No  longer,"  said  he  with 
characteristic  phraseology  and  confidence,  "  will  banks 
and  tariffs  occupy  the  foremost  place,  and,  sounding 
always  with  the  chink  of  dollars  and  cents,  give  their 
tone  to  the  policy  of  the  country.  Henceforward, 
PROTECTION  TO  MAN  will  be  the  true  AMERICAN  SYS 
TEM."  It  is  his  glory  that  more  than  any  other  polit 
ical  leader  of  the  times,  he  endeavored  to  make  this 
noble  prophecy  reality  in  the.  life  of  the  North.  And 
though  the  actual  results  fell  short,  wretchedly  short 
of  the  splendid  expectation,  yet  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  there  did  pass  a  novel  virtue,  a  moral  force,  into 
the  politics  of  the  free  States,  which  wrought  mightily 
eve* afterward  for  the  protection  of  man  in  America. 
In  the  campaign,  which  the  Faneuil  Hall  ratification 
meeting  inaugurated  in  Massachusetts,  Sumner  ren 
dered  signal  service  to  the  new  party  on  the  stump, 
addressing , -large  audiences  all  over  the  State,  from 
the  sea  to  the  hills.  But  this  was  not  the  sum  of  his 
contributions  to  the  Free  Soil  movement  during  this 
first  year  of  its  appearance  as  a  national  organization. 
His  pen  was  as  busy  as  was  his  tongue  in  its  behalf.  He 
accepted  besides  the  Free  Soil  nomination  for  Con- 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  2OI 

gress  from  the  Boston  district.  The  men  who  nomi 
nated  knew,  and  he  knew,  that  he  would  not  be  elected. 
But  the  time  had  come  when  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
friends  of  freedom  to  stand  together  at  the  ballot-box, 
and  to  make  a  show  of  hands  for  the  sake  of  their 
principles.  Union  now  was  the  watchword,  and  self- 
sacrifice  and  labor.  It  was  peculiarly  Sumner's,  and 
hence  he  cheerfully  took  the  post  assigned  him  in  the 
contest,  notwithstanding  his  early  and  strong  disin 
clination  to  enter  upon  a  political  career. 

"  It  has  been  my  desire  and  determination,"  he 
wrote  the  Committee  which  informed  him  of  his 
nomination,  "to  labor  in  such  fields  of  usefulness  as 
are  open  to  every  private  citizen,  without  the  honor, 
emolument,  or  constraint  of  office.  I  would  show  by 
example  (might  I  so  aspire?)  that  something  may 
be  done  for  the  welfare  of  our  race,  without  the 
support  of  public  station  or  the  accident  of  popular 
favor.  In  this  course  I  hope  to  persevere."  Happily 
for  mankind  this  lofty  aspiration  of  the  young  scholar 
was  not  down  in  the  book  of  destiny.  For  him  the 
Fates  had  quite  other  plans,  with  the  execution  of 
which,  all  unconscious  to  himself,  they  were,  at  the 
moment,  busily  engaged. 

The  estimation  in  which  Sumner  was  held  at  this 
time  in  Massachusetts  may  be  gathered  from  words 
of  a  man  of  so  much  mental  sang-froid,  as  was  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  uttered  by  him  on  the  occasion  of 
the  last  rally  for  freedom  in  Faneuil  Hall,  on  the 
night  of  November  9th,  and  in  Mr.  Sumner's  absence 
from  the  meeting.  Said  Mr.  Adams:  "  Charles  Sum 
ner  is  a  man  of  large  heart — not  of  that  class  of  poli 
ticians  who  calculate  availability,  and  the  numbers 


202  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

of  the  opposition,  but  a  man  who  takes  an  enlarged 
view  of  a  noble  system  of  action,  and  places  his 
shoulder  to  the  wheel  to  move  it  forward.  He  is 
now  doing  more  to  impress  on  the  country  a  new  and 
powerful  moral  sentiment  in  connection  with  the 
movement  than  any  man  or  any  other  ten  men  in  the 
country."  That  certainly  sounds  like  enthusiastic 
praise,  and  it  may  be  extravagant  praise.  But  this 
much  it  is  safe  to  assert:  that  the  reform  in  Massa 
chusetts  had  found  in  a  young  jurist  of  thirty- 
seven  its  preeminent  representative.  Subsequent 
events  proved  that  there  were  others  in  the  country 
who  equaled  him  in  intellectual  force,  and  in  some 
particular  lines  of  political  leadership  excelled  him, 
as  did  S.  P.  Chase  in  practical  statesmanship,  and 
W.  H.  Seward  and  Henry  Wilson  in  party  manage 
ment.  But  in  moral  oneness  of  purpose  and  mo 
mentum  of  character  he  was  unrivaled.  And  at  this 
juncture  of  the  conflict  between  freedom  and  slav 
ery  in  the  Republic,  those  were  the  qualities,  above 
all  others,  which  freedom  required  her  champions  to 
possess.  In  sheer  weight  of  intellect  Webster  had 
no  peer  in  the  public  life  of  the  land.  But,  lacking 
the  moral  qualities  which  distinguished  Sumner,  the 
Godlike  Daniel  was  thrust  from  his  throne  that  an 
other  might  mount  it.  Sumner's  feet,  without  his 
knowing  it,  were  already  upon  the  steps  of  Webster's 
throne  in  Massachusetts. 

Another  capital  qualification  of  Sumner  for  leader 
ship  at  this  crisis  was  the  clearness  with  which  he 
apprehended  the  difference  between  political  oppo 
sition  to  slavery,  and  the  moral  agitation  against  it 
\vhich  looked  to  general  and  immediate  emancipa- 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  203 

tion  as  a  direct  end.  He  well  knew  that  a  political 
party  in  America  could  not  address  itself  success 
fully  to  such  an  end.  For  the  political  power  of  the 
Union  could  not  reach  slavery  within  the  States. 
Party  action  had  necessarily  to  proceed  along  Con 
stitutional  lines,  in  order  to  acquire  and  retain  the 
confidence  and  support  of  the  people.  Slavery  was 
local,  and  drew  its  life  from  municipal  institutions. 
In  the  absence  of  positive  law  creating  the  evil,  it 
had  no  standing  in  the  national  forum. 

To  his  scholar's  ear,  the  history  of  the  country 
sounded  but  one  note — the  note  of  freedom.  To  his 
jurist's  eye,  the  Constitution  on  no  page  and  in  no 
line  sanctioned  the  holding  of  property  in  men. 
Freedom  was  national,  slavery  was  sectional.  He 
opposed  slavery,  therefore,  wherever  the  nation  was 
responsible  for  it,  whether  in  the  District  of  Colum 
bia,  or  in  the  national  Territories,  or  on  the  high  seas 
under  the  national  colors.  Here  he  stopped,  wisely 
circumscribing  his  political  aims  and  duties  by  his 
political  reponsibilities.  His  aim  as  a  political  re 
former  was,  in  fine,  to  place  the  National  Govern 
ment  "openly,  actively,  and  perpetually,  on  the  side 
of  freedom." 

The  months  from  the  formation  of  the  Free  Soil 
party  to  the  meeting  of  Congress  in  December,  1849, 
were  months  of  steadily  increasing  excitement  on  the 
subject  of  slavery.  The  slave-power,  repeatedly  at 
tempting,  had  repeatedly  failed  to  open  the  national 
Territories  to  slave  immigration.  Over  Oregon,  in 
1848,  there  had  occurred  in  Congress  a  fierce  prelimi 
nary  trial  of  strength  between  the  sections.  The 
South  was  thrown  in  the  struggle,  and  the  anti-slavery 


204  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

principles  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787  were  applied  to  the 
Territory.  Defeated  at  this  point,  the  slave  States 
threw  themselves  with  determined  purpose  upon 
California  and  New  Mexico,  in  order  to  effect  an  open 
ing  into  them  for  the  peculiar  institution,  and  thereby 
to  preserve  the  political  balance  of  the  federal  system 
in  its  favor.  But  to  every  such  attempt  the  North 
opposed  a  resolute  front  and  wall  of  resistance  to  the 
farther  extension  of  slavery  under  the  Constitution. 
Nevertheless,  Calhoun  and  the  South  clung  to  the 
pretension  of  the  self-extension  of  the  evil  under  that 
instrument. 

Baffled  and  at  bay,  they  directly  set  up  the  cry  that 
the  stronger  section  was  oppressing  the  weaker,  un 
justly  depriving  it  of  its  Constitutional  rights  and 
equality  in  the  Union.  Disunion  sentiments  were 
flagrantly  professed  and  passionately  preached  from 
this  time  at  the  South.  The  controversy  invaded 
religious  bodies,  and  churches  resounded  with  the 
clash  and  clangor  of  conflicting  moral  and  social 
ideas  and  interests,  and  began  to  part  asunder  along 
sectional  lines. 

The  application  of  California  for  admission  into 
the  Union,  as  a  free  State,  unloosed  the  winds,  and 
gave  to  the  rising  tempest  its  tongue  of  thunder.  In 
the  lurid  glare  of  the  crisis  it  was  presently  dis 
covered  that  Calhoun,  about  to  die,  had  paused, 
with  the  South  at  his  back,  on  the  brink  of  disunion. 
Then,  terror-stricken  for  the  fate  of  their  dear  Union, 
Northern  Whigs  and  Northern  Democrats  lifted 
again  on  deck  the  old  pilot  of  compromise.  Webster, 
with  one  eye  on  the  Union  and  the  other  on  the  Presi 
dency,  drew  down  the  proud  colors  of  Liberty  from 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  205 

Iiis  dishonored  old  iron  sides,  and  drifted  away  in  the 
wake  of  the  slave-power.  On  March  7,  1850,  the 
great  New  Englander,  and  eulogist  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers,  flung  the  whole  weight  of  his  powerful 
voice  and  influence  in  the  scales  against  the  slave. 
California  was  admitted  as  a  free  State,  but  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Bill  was  enacted  into  law.  Again  was 
Webster's  glorious  Union  saved  at  heavy  cost  to 
humanity. 

From  the  passage  of  that  wicked  law,  the  anti- 
slavery  tide  in  Massachusetts  rose  rapidly  to  its  flood. 
The  overthrow  of  Webster,  Winthrop,  and  the  Whigs 
followed  swiftly  in  its  course.  After  Sumner,  although 
a  United  States  Commissioner,  denounced  the  in 
famous  act,  from  the  platform  of  Faneuil  Hall,  in  a 
speech  of  extraordinary  boldness  and  energy,  an 
nouncing  his  resolute  purpose  to  refuse  his  official 
aid  to  its  execution  in  the  memorable  sentence,  "  I 
cannot  forget  that  I  am  a  man,  although  I  am  a 
commissioner"  Massachusetts  was  not  long  in  seeing 
that  she  had  found  Webster's  successor.  Webster's 
political  crown  and  leadership  were,  in  truth,  then 
and  there  transferred  to  the  brow  of  Sumner. 

The  reader  must  have  a  passage  or  two  from  this 
speech  which  was  said  to  have  made  Mr.  Sumner  Sen 
ator.  "  The  soul  sickens," — he  is  denouncing  the  Fu 
gitive  Slave  Law — "  in  the  contemplation  of  this  legal 
ized  outrage.  In  the  dreary  annals  of  the  past  there 
are  many  acts  of  shame,  there  are  ordinances  of  mon- 
archs,  and  laws,  which  have  become  a  by-word  and  a 
hissing  to  the  nations.  But  when  we  consider  the 
country  and  the  age,  I  ask  fearlessly,  what  act  of 
shame,  what  ordinance  of  monarch,  what  law,  can 


206  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

compare    in    atrocity    with    this    enactment    of     an 
American    Congress  ?      I    do      not      forget    Appius 
Claudius,    tyrant   Decemvir  of    ancient    Rome,   con 
demning  Virginia   as   a   slave,   nor  Louis   the   Four 
teenth,  of  France,  letting  slip  the  dogs  of  religious 
persecution  by  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes, 
nor   Charles   the    First    of    England,    arousing    the 
patriot  rage  of   Hampden  by  the  extortion   of  ship- 
money,  nor  the  British  Parliament,  provoking  in  our 
country  spirits  kindred  to  Hampden,  by  the   tyranny 
of    the    Stamp    Act    and    Tea    Tax.     I    would    not 
exaggerate  ;    I  wish   to    keep   within   bounds  ;  but  I 
think  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  condemnation 
now  affixed   to   all   these   transactions,  and  to    their 
authors,  must  be  the  lot  hereafter  of  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Bill,  and  of  every  one,  according  to  the    measure  of 
his  influence,  who  gave  it  his  support.     Into   the  im 
mortal    catalogue    of    national    crimes     it    has    now 
passed,  drawing  by    inexorable  necessity  its   authors 
also,  and  chiefly  him,  who,  as  President  of  the  United 
States,  set  his  name  to  the  Bill,  and  breathed  into  it 
that   final    breath   without   which    it   would   bear  no 
life.     Other    Presidents    may    be    forgotten,  but  the 
name  signed  to  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill  can   never  be 
forgotten.     There  are  depths  of  infamy,  as  there  are 
heights  of  fame.     I  regret    to   say  what  I    must,  but 
truth   compels    me.     Better   for    him    had    he    never 
been  born.     Better  for  his  memory  and  for  the  good 
name  of  his  children  had  he  never  been  President." 

So  much  for  the  Black  Bill  and  its  authors.  Here 
is  another  passage  like  unto  it:  "  Elsewhere  he  may 
pursue  his  human  prey,"  the  orator  is  now  fulmining 
against  the  slave-hunter,  "employ  his  congenial 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  207 

bloodhounds,  and  exult  in  his  successful  game  ;  but 
into  Massachusetts  he  must  not  come.  Again,  let  me 
be  understood.  I  counsel  no  violence.  I  would  not 
touch  his  person.  Not  with  whips  and  thongs  would 
I  scourge  him  from  the  land.  The  contempt,  the 
indignation,  the  abhorrence  of  the  community  shall 
be  our  weapons  of  offense.  Wherever  he  moves,  he 
shall  find  no  house  to  receive  him,  no  table  spread 
to  nourish  him,  no  welcome  to  cheer  him.  The  dis 
mal  lot  of  the  Roman  exile  shall  be  his.  He  shall  be 
a  wanderer,  without  roof,  fire,  or  water.  Men  shall 
point  at  him  in  the  streets,  and  on  the  highways.  .  .  . 
Villages,  towns,  and  cities  shall  refuse  to  receive  the 
monster  ;  they  shall  vomit  him  forth,  never  again  to 
disturb  the  repose  of  our  community." 

To  the  imbecile  boast  that  the  Compromise  meas 
ures  of  1850,  had  settled  the  slavery  question,  he 
replied  thus  :  "  Yes,  settled — settled — that  is  the  word. 
Nothing,  sir,  can  be  settled  which  is  not  right.'"  Warn 
ing  the  friends  of  freedom  against  lightly  reposing 
confidence  in  weak  and  irresolute  men,  he  gave  them 
as  a  guide  to  conduct  his  famous  recipe,  which  runs 
as  follows  :  "  Three  things  at  least  they  must 
require  :  the  first  is  backbone  ;  the  second  is  backbone  _; 
and  the  third  is  backbone." 

This  speech  was  made  November  6, 1850,  just  before 
the  annual  elections  in  Massachusetts,  which  com 
prised  that  year  State  officers,  members  of  Congress, 
and  members  of  both  branches  of  the  Legislature. 
The  multiplicity  of  political  combinations  which 
arose  in  the  State  at  this  time,  for  the  purpose  of 
influencing  the  elections,  indicated  a  general  break 
ing  up  of  the  old  parties  in  Massachusetts,  and  a  gen- 


208  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

eral  growth  of  the  new  organization.  There  were 
combinations  in  at  least  two  of  the  Congressional 
districts  between  Whigs  and  Free  Soilers,  while 
combinations  prevailed  generally  in  the  Senatorial 
districts  between  Democrats  and  Free  Soilers. 
Indeed,  there  was  a  close  alliance  of  these  two  par 
ties  during  the  campaign,  the  bargain  being  between 
the  parties  of  the  first  and  of  the  second  parts  of  this 
coalition,  that  the  Democrats  should  have  the  State 
officers,  and  the  Free  Soilers  the  United  States  Sena 
tor  for  the  long  term,  to  be  chosen  to  the  vacancy 
made  by  Mr.  Webster's  resignation  of  the  office  for 
the  Secretaryship  of  State  in  Millard  Fillmore's 
cabinet. 

The  Democratic  and  Free  Soil  coalition  triumphed 
in  the  elections,  and  in  due  time  it  proceeded  to  the 
division  of  the  various  offices,  in  accordance  with  the 
ante-election  understanding  between  the  parties. 
Owing  to  the  majority  principle,  which  was  at  that 
time  incorporated  in  the  Constitution  of  the  State, 
and  the  failure  of  some  of  the  candidates  for  State 
offices  to  receive  a  majority  of  the  votes,  their  elec 
tion  was  thrown  into  the  Legislature,  which  was  con 
trolled  by  the  Democrats  and  the  Free  Soilers.  The 
former  were  awarded  the  Governor,  Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor,  five  of  the  nine  councillors,  the  Treasurer,  and 
the  Senator  for  the  short  term  ;  the  latter  got  the 
Senator  for  the  long  term. 

The  choice  of  the  Free  Soilers  in  the  Legislature,  in 
the  State  at  large,  and,  in  fact,  throughout  the 
North,  fell  with  singular  unanimity  upon  Sumner,  as 
an  almost  ideal  representative  of  Free  Soil  princi 
ples.  To  the  Democrats  in  the  Legislature  and  in 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  209 

the  State  at  large,  he  was,  possibly,  the  least  objec 
tionable  candidate  with  Whig  antecedents,  who 
could  have  been  presented  for  their  suffrages  on  the 
Senatorship  subject.  Sumner  had  never  been  a  Whig 
partisan,  had  not  identified  himself  actively  with  dis 
tinctively  Whig  principles  and  policies,  such  as  were 
embraced  in  the  Tariff  and  the  Bank  questions.  The 
Democratic  legislative  caucus  accepted  him  as  the 
candidate  of  that  party,  and  thereupon  he  became 
the  joint  candidate  for  the  United  States  Senator- 
ship  of  the  Free  Soil  and  the  Democratic  members  of 
the  Legislature. 

In  pursuance  of  the  arrangement  between  the  par 
ties  to  the  coalition,  the  Legislature  elected  George 
S.  Boutwell  and  Henry  W.  Cushman,  Democrats, 
Governor  and  Lieutenant-Governor,  respectively,  and 
subsequently,  Robert  Rantoul,  Jr.,  another  Demo 
crat,  Senator  for  the  short  term,  expiring  March  4, 
1851.  The  balloting  for  Senator  for  the  long  term 
was  protracted  and  exciting,  lasting  from  January  i4th 
to  April  24,  1851,  when  Mr.  Sumner  was  chosen  by  a 
majority  of  one  on  the  twenty-sixth  ballot  in  a  total 
vote  in  the  House  of  384,  the  Senate  on  its  part  having 
elected  him  three  months  before  to  the  same  office. 
Robert  C.  Winthrop  was,  from  beginning  to  end,  the 
candidate  of  the  Whigs  for  Webster's  seat,  and  was, 
therefore,  as  far  as  numbers  go,  Sumner's  principal 
opponent  before  the  Legislature,  for  the  long  Sena 
torial  term. 

Throughout  the  long  contest   in   the  Legislature, 

Sumner  observed  strictly,  deviated  not  the  breadth  of 

a  hair,  from  the  "  rule  of  non-intervention"  which  he 

prescribed  to  himself  touching  his  candidacy.     "  No 

14 


210  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

man  ever  accepted  office,"  justly  remarked  the  Daily 
Commonwealth  on  the  morning  after  his  election,  "  with 
cleaner  hands  than  Charles  Sumner.  He  consented 
to  receive  the  nomination  with  extreme  reluctance. 
.  .  .  After  he  was  nominated,  and  an  onslaught  un 
precedented  for  ferocity  and  recklessness  in  political 
warfare  had  seemed  to  render  his  election  impossible, 
unless  he  would  authorize  some  qualification  of  the 
alleged  obnoxious  doctrines  of  his  speeches,  particu 
larly  of  his  last  Faneuil  Hall  speech,  Mr.  Sumner  re 
fused  to  retract,  qualify,  or  explain.  Ten  lines  from  his 
pen — lines  that  a  politician  might  have  written  without 
even  the  appearance  of  a  change  of  sentiment — would 
have  secured  his  election  in  January.  No  solicitation 
of  friends  or  opponents  could  extort  a  line.  A  dele 
gation  of  Hunkers  applied  to  him  for  a  few  words  to 
cover  their  retreat;  in  reply,  he  stated  that  he  had  no 
pledges  to  give,  no  explanations  to  make;  he  referred 
them  to  his  published  speeches  for  his  position,  and 
added  that  he  had  not  sought  the  office,  but,  if  it 
came  to  him,  it  must  find  him  an  independent  man. 
To  another  Democrat,  who  called  on  him  on  the  same 
errand,  he  said,  *  If  by  walking  across  my  office  I 
could  secure  the  Senatorship,  I  would  not  take  a 
step.'  In  February,  he  placed  in  the  hands  of  General 
Wilson  a  letter  authorizing  that  gentleman  to  with 
draw  his  name,  whenever,  in  his  judgment,  the  good 
of  the  cause  should  require  it." 

"  In  this  matter,  I  pray  you,"  so  ran  the  letter  to 
Henry  Wilson  above  referred  to,  "  do  not  think  of 
me.  I  have  no  political  prospects  which  I  desire  to 
nurse.  There  is  nothing  in  the  political  field  which 
I  covet.  Abandon  me,  then,  whenever  you  think  best, 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  211 

without  notice  or  apology.  The  cause  is  everything  ; 
I  am  nothing."  So  straight  morally  did  the  Free  Soil 
candidate  stand  that  he  leaned  backward.  Surely  he 
possessed  to  a  singular  degree  the  three  requisites 
of  a  representative  of  freedom,  demanded  by  him 
self,  backbone,  backbone,  backbone.  He  was  distinctly 
and  emphatically  of  the  vertebrated  breed  of 
men. 

Averse  to  doing  anything  while  the  contest  lasted 
to  influence  the  vote  of  the  Legislature  in  his  favor, 
Sumner,  after  it  was  decided,  was  not  less  averse  to 
having  any  demonstration  made  in  connection  with 
his  election,  which  might  give  it  the  air  of  a  personal 
triumph.  It  was  not  his  triumph  but  the  cause's. 
The  cause  was  to  be  magnified  under  the  circum 
stances,  not  any  man.  The  cause  was  everything,  the 
individual  nothing.  Hence,  he  discountenanced  a 
projected  public  demonstration  at  his  own  house  on 
the  evening  of  his  election.  His  heart,  said  he,  dic 
tated  silence.  And  no  wonder.  For  his  election  was 
an  event  of  the  first  magnitude  in  the  politics  of  the 
times.  It  put  upon  him  responsibilities  which  Atlan- 
tean  shoulders  could  alone  bear  up  under.  Therefore, 
that  evening  he  absented  himself  from  Boston,  be 
taking  himself  to  Cambridge  and  the  home  of  his 
friend,  Henry  W.  Longfellow,  where  he  passed  the 
night. 

There  were  joyful  demonstrations  of  the  friends  of 
freedom  in  Boston  that  night,  notwithstanding  the 
flight  of  the  victor  beyond  earshot  of  the  paeans  and 
the  plaudits  of  his  friends  and  followers.  There  was 
rejoicing  of  the  friends  of  freedom  throughout  the 
North,  because  of  this  far-reaching  achievement, 


212  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

which,  indeed,  cheered  the  hearts  of  good  men  and 
true,  across  the  Atlantic  as  well. 

Congratulations  poured  upon  him  from  every 
quarter,  thick  and  fast.  S.  P.  Chase  wrote:  "  Laus 
Deo  !  From  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  congratulate 
you — no,  not  you,  but  all  friends  of  freedom 
everywhere — upon  your  election  to  the  Senate." 
Joshua  R.  Giddings  wrote  from  Ohio:  "A  most 
intense  interest  was  felt  in  this  whole  region, 
and  I  have  seen  no  event  which  has  given  greater  joy 
to  the  population  generally  "  Elihu  Burritt  wrote 
from  England:  "My  soul  is  gladdened  to  great  and 
exceeding  joy  at  the  news  of  your  election  to  fill  the 
place  of  Daniel  Webster.  It  has  been  hailed  by  the 
friends  of  human  freedom  and  progress  in  this  country 
with  exultation.  There  are  more  eyes  and  hearts 
fixed  upon  your  course  than  upon  that  of  any  man  in 
America."  John  G.  Whittier  wrote:  "I  rejoice  that, 
unpledged,  free,  and  without  a  single  concession  or 
compromise,  thou  art  enabled  to  take  thy  place  in 
the  Senate.  I  never  knew  such  a  general  feeling  of 
real  heart  pleasure  and  satisfaction  as  is  manifested 
by  all  except  inveterate  Hunkers  in  view  of  thy 
election.  The  whole  country  is  electrified  by  it. 
Sick  abed,  I  heard  the  guns,  Quaker  as  I  am,  with 
real  satisfaction." 

At  the  time  of  his  election  to  the  Senate,  Charles 
Sumner  had  just  turned  forty.  He  was  in  the  me 
ridian  of  the  intellectual  life,  and  in  the  fullness  of 
manly  vigor  and  beauty.  The  splendid  position  he 
had  reached  by  sheer  worth — unrivaled  services.  Not 
before,  nor  since,  we  venture  to  assert,  has  public 
office  been  so  utterly  unsolicited.  He  turned  not  a 


THE    CONFLICT    THICKENS.  213 

finger,  scorned  to  budge  an  inch,  would  not  write  a 
line  to  obtain  the  grand  prize.  It  went  to  him  by 
the  laws  of  gravitation  and  character  —  to  him  the 
clean  of  hand  and  pure  of  soul.  It  was  the  Hour 
finding  the  Man. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY. 

AT  the  instant  that  Charles  Sumner  entered  "  that 
iron  and  marble  body,"  as  his  friend  Charles  Francis 
Adams  very  fitly  characterized  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  of  those  days,  the  last  of  its  early 
giants  was  leaving  it  forever.  Calhoun  had  already 
passed  away.  Webster  was  in  Millard  Fillmore^  cabi 
net  ;  and  Clay  was  escaping,  in  his  own  picturesque 
and  pathetic  phrase,  "  Scarred  by  spears  and  worried 
by  wounds  to  draghis  mutilated  body  to  his  lair  and  lie 
down  and  die."  The  representative  of  Compromise 
was  making  his  exit  from  one  door  of  the  stage  ;  the 
representative  of  Conscience  his  entrance  through 
another.  Was  it  accident  or  prophecy  ?  Were  the 
bells  of  Destiny  ringing  "  in  the  valiant  man  and 
free,  the  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand  "  and  ringing 
out  "  the  darkness  of  the  land  "  ? 

But,  whether  accident  or  prophecy,  Sumner  had 
advanced  into  the  midst  of  a  hostile  camp.  On 
either  side  enemies  surrounded  him.  Southern 
Whigs  and  Southern  Democrats  hated  him.  North 
ern  Whigs  and  Northern  Democrats  likewise  hated 
him.  He  was  wholly  without  party  affiliations — well- 
nigh  friendless.  But,  thanks  to  the  revolution  which 
was  working  in  the  free  States,  he  was  not  absolutely 
so.  For  William  H  Seward  was  already  there,  and 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  215 

Salmon  P.  Chase,  and  John  P.  Hale,  and  Hannibal 
Hamlin.  Under  these  circumstances  it  behooved 
him  to  take  no  precipitate  step.  A  smaller  man,  a 
leader  less  fearless  and  wise,  might  have  blundered 
just  here  by  leaping  too  hastily  with  his  cause  into 
the  arena  of  debate. 

Sumner  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  His  self-poise 
and  control  for  nine  months  were  simply  admirable. 
"  Endurance,"  says  Lowell,  "is  the  crowning  quality, 
and  patience  all  the  passion  of  great  hearts."  Cer 
tainly,  during  those  trying  months,  they  were  Sum- 
ner's,  the  crowning  quality  and  the  passion.  First 
the  blade — he  had  to  acquaint  himself  with  the  rou 
tine  and  business  of  legislation  ;  then  the  ear — had 
to  study  the  personnel  of  the  Senate,  become  master 
of  the  situation. 

Four  times  he  essayed  his  strength  on  subjects  of 
inferior  interest  to  the  one  which  he  was  carrying  in 
his  heart,  as  mothers  carry  their  unborn  babes. 
Each  trial  of  his  parliamentary  wings  raised  him  in 
the  estimation  of  friends  and  foes.  His  welcome  to 
Kossuth,  and  his  tribute  to  Robert  Rantoul,  Jr., 
proved  him  to  be  an  accomplished  orator.  His 
speech  on  the  Public  Land  question  evinced  him, 
besides,  strong  in  history,  argument,  and  law. 

No  vehemence  of  anti-slavery  pressure,  no  shock 
of  angry  criticism  coming  from  home,  was  able  to 
jostle  him  out  of  his  fixed  determination  to  speak 
only  when  he  was  ready,  upon  the  paramount  subject 
of  his  own  and  the  nation's  thoughts.  Winter  went 
and  spring  appeared,  and  yet  his  silence  remained  ; 
summer,  too,  was  waning  before  he  was  really  pre 
pared  to  begin.  Then,  like  an  August  storm,  he 


2l6  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

burst  on  the  Senate  and  the  country  in  that  powerful 
performance  :  "  Freedom  National  ;  Slavery  Sec 
tional." 

Like  all  of  Mr.  Sumner's  efforts,  whether  popular, 
parliamentary,  or  academic,  this  one  was  carefully 
written  out  and  memorised.  He  was  not  absolutely 
incapable  of  speaking  without  this  sort  of  prepara 
tion,  though  what  he  said  then  was  apt  to  lack 
spontaneity  and  the  moral  fervor,  which  distin 
guished  his  written  words.  When  speaking  without 
the  aid  of  manuscript  preparation,  his  utterance 
acquired  an  air  of  what  may  be  termed  literary  dic 
tation — wanted  the  true  requisite  for  the  forcible  dec 
lamation  of  an  orator. 

He  was  deficient  in  the  qualities  of  the  great 
debater,  as  the  reader  has  probably  surmised,  was 
not  able  to  think  effectively  on  his  feet,  to  give  and 
take  hard  hits  within  the  short  range  of  extemporane 
ous  and  hand-to-hand  encounters.  Clay  and  John 
Quincy  Adams  were  preeminent  in  this  species  of 
intellectual  warfare  ;  Webster  and  Calhoun  were  for 
midable.  Sumner,  doubtless,  never  experienced  that 
quick  sympathy  and  marvelous  interplay  of  emotion 
and  intelligence  between  himself  and  an  audience, 
which  made  Wendell  Phillips  the  unrivaled  monarch 
of  the  anti-slavery  platform.  Sumner's  was  the  elo 
quence  of  elaboration,  rather  than  the  eloquence  of 
inspiration.  What  he  did  gave  the  impression  of 
size,  of  length,  breadth,  thoroughness.  He  needed 
space,  and  he  needed  time.  These  granted,  he  could, 
indeed,  be  tremendous. 

He  was  tremendous  on  this  occasion  before  the 
Senate.  His  theme  furnishes  the  keynote  and  the 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  21 7 

keystone  of  his  opposition  to  slavery.  Garrison, 
Phillips,  and  Theodore  D.  Weld,  appealed  against 
the  evil  to  a  common  humanity,  to  the  primary  moral 
instincts  of  mankind  in  condemnation  of  its  villainies 
and  oppressions.  The  appeal  carried  them  beyond 
and  above  constitutions  and  codes  to  the  unwritten 
and  eternal  Right.  Sumner  appealed  against  the 
institution  to  the  self-evident  truths  of  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence,  to  the  spirit  and  letter  of  the 
Constitution,  to  the  sentiments  and  hopes  of  the 
fathers,  and  to  the  early  history  and  policy  of  the 
country,  which  they  had  founded. 

All  these  were  for  freedom  and  against  slavery. 
Their  reverse  was  error.  Public  opinion  was  error- 
bound.  The  North  was  error-bound  ;  and  so  was 
the  South.  Parties  and  politicians  were  error-bound. 
Freedom  was  the  heritage  of  the  nation.  Slav 
ery  had  robbed  it  of  its  birthright.  Slavery  must 
be  disposessed.  Cathago  est  delenda.  As  it  was  in 
the  beginning,  so  it  hath  ever  been,  the  world  needs 
light.  The  great  want  of  his  country  on  the  subject 
of  slavery,  Sumner  believed  to  be  light.  This  speech 
of  his  was  but  a  repetition  in  a  world  of  wrong  of 
the  Divine  fiat,  "  Let  there  be  light  !  "  Light  burst 
from  it  upon  the  national  darkness,  such  light  as  a 
thunderbolt  scatters,  shrivelling  and  shivering  the 
deep-rooted  Lie  and  Sin  of  the  land. 

A  new  hour  that  speech  struck  for  America.  Not 
before  in  the  Government  had  freedom  touched  so 
high  a  mark.  Heretofore  the  slave-power  had  been 
arrogant  and  exacting.  A  keen  observer  might  then 
have  foreseen,  that  freedom,  also,  would  some  day 
become  exacting  and  aggressive.  For  its  advancing 


2l8  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

billows  had  broken  in  the  resounding  periods  and 
passion  of  its  eloquent  champion.  The  manner  of 
the  orator,  which  marked  all  his  public  deliverances, 
was  that  of  a  man  speaking  with  authority,  of  a  man 
who  defers  to  no  one,  prefers  no  one  to  himself.  It 
was,  in  fine,  the  imperious  manner  of  an  orator  con 
scious  of  the  possession  of  great  powers,  and  of 
ability  to  use  them. 

Such  a  champion  of  freedom,  as  was  Sumner,  the 
crisis  required.  God  made  one  American  statesman 
without  moral  joints  when  he  made  Charles  Sumner. 
He  could  not  bend  the  supple  hinges  of  the  knee  to 
the  South,  for  he  had  none  to  bend.  He  must  needs 
stand  erect,  inflexible,  uncompromising,  an  image  of 
Puritan  harshness  and  Puritan  grandeur.  Against 
his  granite-like  character  and  convictions,  the  haughty 
will  of  the  South  was  to  hurl  itself  in  vain.  Orator 
and  oration  revealed  to  the  slave-power,  as  in  a  magic 
mirror  some  things,  which  before  had  seemed  indis 
tinct  and  illusive,  like  "  Birnam  Wood "  moving 
toward  "high  Dunsinane."  But  the  miracle  was 
now  performed,  the  impossible  had  happened.  The 
insurgent  moral  sense  of  a  mudsill  and  shopkeeping 
North  has  at  last  found,  in  the  Government,  voice 
and  vent. 

With  what  rising  apprehensions  must  the  South 
have  listened  to  these  bold  and  prophetic  words  : 
"  The  movement  against  slavery  is  from  the  Everlast 
ing  Arm.  Even  now  it  is  gathering  its  forces  soon 
to  be  confessed  everywhere.  It  may  not  yet  be  felt 
in  the  high  places  of  office  and  power  ;  but  all  who 
can  put  their  ears  humbly  to  the  ground  will  hear 
and  comprehend  its  incessant  and  advancing  tread." 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  219 

Before  the  delivery  of  this  speech,  Sumner  had  ob 
tained  a  taste  of  the  intolerance  and  tyranny  of  the 
"iron  and  marble  body,"  in  the  interest  of  slavery.  As 
early  as  July,  he  had  endeavored  to  get  the  floor  for 
remarks  on  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  and  was  thwarted 
by  the  vigilant  hostility  of  the  masters  of  the  Senate. 
He  did,  however,  hold  the  ear  of  that  body  long 
enough  in  July  to  notify  it  of  his  intention  to  move 
at  an  early  day  the  repeal  of  the  obnoxious  law,  and 
to  explain  why  he  had  not  attempted  to  address  the 
members  on  the  subject  before.  After  this  it  was 
openly  asserted  that  he  should  not  be  allowed  to 
carry  out  his  intention  during  the  session  then  pend 
ing.  But  the  slave-power  knew  not  the  man  whom 
it  had  determined  to  silence. 

Vigilantly  watched  as  he  was  by  his  foes,  he  was 
no  less  vigilant  in  watching  for  a  parliamentary 
opening  for  himself  and  his  cause  in  the  citadel  of 
slavery.  On  August  26,  1852,  the  opening  came,  and 
quickly  Sumner  perceived  it,  and  in  a  flash  was 
through  it  and  upon  the  floor  of  the  Chamber.  On 
that  day,  the  Civil  and  Diplomatic  Bill,  being  under 
consideration  by  the  Senate,  Mr.  Hunter,  of  Vir 
ginia,  moved  an  amendment  to  the  same  to  provide 
for  the  payment  of  sundry  officers  of  the  Govern 
ment  in  the  enforcement  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law. 
Mr.  Hunter  was  so  intent  upon  safeguarding  South 
ern  property,  that,  for  the  nonce,  he  quite  forgot  that 
he  and  his  colleagues  were  trying  to  silence  an  alert 
and  determined  adversary.  No  sooner  had  he  thus 
exposed  his  flanks  Jhan  Sumner  dashed  promptly  in 
with  an  amendment  to  the  amendment — to  wit,  that 
no  such  allowance  be  authorized  for  any  expenses 


220  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

incurred  in  executing  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill,  and 
that  the  same  be  repealed.  It  was  in  support  of  this 
amendment,  and  by  this  stratagem,  that  he  finally 
obtained  the  floor,  and  made  his  first  great  speech 
against  slavery  in  the  Senate. 

Sumner  did  not  limit  his  opposition  to  the  giant 
wrong  of  the  land  to  any  particular  place,  or  occa 
sion,  or  mode  of  attack.  He  struck  it  whenever, 
wherever,  and  with  whatsoever  he  got  a  chance.  He 
made  use,  in  the  noblest  sense,  of  all  the  means 
which  God  and  Nature  put  within  his  reach  to 
weaken  and  destroy  the  slave-power  in  the  Govern 
ment,  and  the  cruel,  prescriptive  spirit  which  it 
generated  toward  the  colored  race  in  the  free  States. 
His  argument  in  favor  of  equality  before  the  law  in 
Massachusetts,  and  against  the  constitutionality  of 
separate  colored  schools  in  Boston,  before  the  Sup 
reme  Court  of  that  State,  December  4,  1849,  was 
action  against  the  national  iniquity  along  this  line. 
He  made  for  the  time  being  the  Supreme  Court  an 
anti-slavery  meeting-house,  and  its  bar  an  anti- 
slavery  platform.  And  a  very  effective  anti-slavery 
agent  he  proved,  all  the  more  so  because  of  the  pres 
ence  of  Robert  Morris,  a  black  lawyer,  whom  he  had 
associated  with  himself  as  counsel  in  the  case. 

So,  also,  should  be  classed  his  speech,  entitled  "The 
Party  of  Freedom  :  Its  Necessity  and  Practicability," 
delivered  before  the  Free  Soil  State  Convention  of 
Massachusetts,  held  at  Lowell,  September  15,  1852. 
Sumner's  purpose  in  it  was  to  create  a  freedom- 
power  in  the  North,  to  meet  and  master  the  slave- 
power  of  the  South.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Con 
vention  to  revise  and  amend  the  Constitution  of 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  221 

Massachusetts  in  1853  ;  and  here  again  two  of  the 
four  speeches  made  by  him  during  the  sessions  of 
that  body  must  be  viewed  as  indirect  attacks  upon 
slavery,  and  its  progeny,  caste  prejudice.  One  of  these 
speeches  was  on  the  "  Power  of  the  State  over  the 
Militia,"  in  which  he  argues  "  that  in  the  organiza 
tion  of  the  volunteer  military  companies  of  the 
commonwealth  there  shall  be  no  distinction  of  color 
or  race."  The  other  address  was  on  "  Bills  of  Rights, 
their  History  and  Policy,"  which  furnished  a  capital 
text  for  an  anti-slavery  sermon  from  the  great  lay 
preacher  of  the  gospel  of  national  righteousness. 

With  these  sturdy  blows  upon  the  many-headed 
Wrong  with  which  he  was  battling  must  be  classed 
his  address,  entitled  "  Finger-Point  from  Plymouth 
Rock,"  given  by  him  on  the  occasion  of  the  festival, 
held  August  i,  1853,  in  commemoration  of  the  embark 
ation  of  the  Pilgrims.  Although  called  up  to  speak  to 
the  toast  :  "  The  Senate  of  the  United  States — the  con 
centrated  light  of  the  stars  of  the  Union,"  he,  never 
theless,  chose  his  own  text,  which  was  more  in 
consonance  with  the  thought  which  had  then  posses 
sion  of  his  heart  and  mind.  While  he  made  no  overt 
allusion  to  the  irrepressible  conflict  then  raging  be 
tween  freedom  and  slavery  in  the  Republic,  yet  it 
was  palpable  to  all  that  behind  the  struggles  of  the 
persecuted  Puritans  for  religious  liberty,  he  was 
exalting  the  struggles  of  the  friends  of  freedom  of 
his  own  day,  and  of  the  country  founded  by  the  devo 
tion  to  duty,  and  the  courage  and  constancy  of 
those  seventeenth-century  reformers  and  foes  of 
oppression. 

But,  while  he  thus  utilized  all  the  ways  and  means 


222  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

which  his  increasing  influence  and  opportunities  were 
bringing  to  him,  in  well-delivered  blows  upon  the 
head  of  the  great  iniquity,  his  seat  in  the  Senate  fur 
nished  him  now  his  chief  coign  of  vantage  in  the 
war.  From  this  commanding  position,  he  trained  his 
heaviest  guns,  poured  his  most  destructive  fire  upon 
the  strongholds  of  the  slave-power.  After  the  long 
silence  of  those  early  months  was  broken  by  the  broad 
side  of  his  first  great  speech  against  the  slave  des 
potism,  the  deep  thunder  of  his  artillery  was  heard 
oftener,  speaking  from  those  heights. 

Meanwhile,  the  temper  of  the  South  was  growing 
more  unreasonable,  violent,  and  arrogant.  Worsted 
as  she  clearly  was,  in  the  contest  for  political  suprem 
acy,  since  the  admission  of  California  as  a  free  State 
into  the  Union,  she,  nevertheless,  clung  passionately 
to  her  pretensions  to  sectional  leadership  and  control. 
As  she  had  no  longer  anything  to  lose,  and  much  to 
recover,  her  action  acquired  a  certain  defiant  and  reck 
less  tone.  If  finally  defeated  in  her  purpose,  there 
were,  in  the  background,  secession  and  a  Southern 
Confederacy  to  retreat  upon. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  North  was  the  theatre  where 
was  enacting  a  kind  of  double  drama.  There  was,  in 
the  first  place,  the  capital  issue  between  it  and  its 
Southern  rival,  the  struggle  for  political  supremacy 
in  the  Union;  there  was  besides,  the  conflict  between 
its  aspirations  for  sectional  ascendency,  and  its  anx 
iety  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union.  This  by-play 
of  its  aspirations  and  its  apprehensions  rose  at  times 
to  the  gravity  of  the  main  action.  It  was  this  double 
movement  of  the  passions,  which  destroyed  Northern 
unity  of  purpose  in  the  presence  of  danger  and  of  its 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  223 

Southern  antagonist,  gave  to  its  leaders  a  timid,  halt 
ing,  irresolute  disposition,  pulled  them  back  from  any 
decisive  step,  the  moment  they  espied  the  shadow  of 
a  crisis  above  the  national  horizon.  While  the  slave- 
power  gained  constantly  in  singleness  and  energy  of 
aim,  the  freedom-power,  because  of  this  duality  of 
purpose,  was  subjected  to  ever  recurrent  irregularities 
and  perturbations  of  conduct.  The  situation  at  the 
North  was  still  further  complicated  by  the  disintegra 
tion  and  chaos  into  which  the  two  old  parties  were 
tumbling  there,  and  by  the  fierce  jealousies  and  rival 
ries  of  party  leaders  within  them.  The  conditions, 
in  1854,  were  all  propitious  to  Southern  aggression, 
favorable  for  the  commission  of  some  bold,  unpre 
cedented  crime  against  liberty. 

Clay  did  not  live  to  see  the  "black  spirits  and 
white,  red  spirits  and  grey,"  which  issued  from  the 
cauldron  of  1850,  about  which  he  sang  his  sad  swan 
song.  Calhoun  had  preceded  him  to  the  everlasting 
quiet  of  the  grave.  Webster,  broken-hearted  and 
dishonored,  yet  grand  still  in  his  ruin,  followed  their 
wearied  way  to  the  tomb.  At  last  the  three  master 
lights,  to  which  all  men  had  looked  in  trial  hours, 
were  quenched  in  their  lofty  towers.  The  sea  had 
risen,  and  the  wind  and  the  witching  voices  of  storm 
and  night.  They  were  abroad  and  mingling,  those 
"black  spirits  and  white,"  which  the  music  of  their 
triune  and  triumphant  eloquence  had  so  often  en 
raptured  back  to  hell.  As  these  imposing  lumina 
ries  sank  one  after  another  into  the  void,  darkness  and 
tumult  advanced  apace  through  the  land. 

It  was  at  this  juncture,  that  the  most  striking,  and, 
perhaps,  sinister  figure  in  American  party  history 


224  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

loomed  into  greatness.  Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  a 
curious  and  grim  example  of  the  survival  of  Viking 
instincts  in  the  modern  office-seeker.  On  the  sea  of 
politics,  he  was  a  veritable  water-dog,  daring, 
unscrupulous,  lawless,  transcendently  able,  and  trans- 
cendently  heartless.  The  sight  of  the  Presidency 
affected  him  in  much  the  same  manner,  as  did  the 
effete  and  rich  civilizations  and  countries  of  Latin 
Europe  affect  his  roving,  robber  prototypes  twelve 
hundred  years  before.  It  stirred  every  drop  of  his 
sea-wolf's  blood  to  get  possession  of  it.  His 
"squatter  sovereignty"  device  was,  indeed,  the  pirate 
ship  that  carried  consternation  to  many  an  anxious 
community  in  the  free  States. 

In  these  circumstances  and  with  such  a  Northern 
ally,  the  South  undertook  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise.  The  introduction  of  a  measure  by  Mr. 
Dodge,  of  Iowa,  on  December  14.  1853,  in  the  Senate 
for  the  organization  of  the  upper  division  of  the 
Louisiana  Purchase  into  the  Territory  of  Nebraska 
was  made  the  occasion  for  achieving  this  result.  All 
that  country,  the  reader  doubtless  knows,  the  slave 
line  of  1820  had  consecrated  forever  to  freedom. 
Calhoun,  bold  as  he  was  in  action,  had  not  ven 
tured  to  counsel  the  abrogation  of  that  memorable 
covenant  between  the  sections,  because  the  agitation 
growing  out  of  such  a  proposition  would  disturb 
"  the  peace  and  harmony  of  the  Union,"  as  he  put  it. 
The  South  had  got  the  worst  of  the  bargain,  he 
reasoned,  was  overreached — but  a  bargain  was  a 
bargain,  and,  therefore,  the  slave  States  should 
stand  by  their  plighted  faith,  unless  released  by  the 
free. 


DEFENDER   OF   HUMANITY.  225 

But  what  the  great  Nullifier  would  not  counsel,  his 
disciples  and  successors  dared  to  do.  The  execution 
of  the  scheme  was  adroitly  committed  to  the  leader 
ship  of  Douglas.  Thus  the  movement  seemed  to 
come  from  the  North,  and  thus  did  the  South  hope  to 
conceal  the  sectionalism  and  rapacity  of  its  design. 
Clearly  did  her  leaders  foresee  that  what  they  would 
do  for  slavery  ought  to  be  done  deftly  and  quickly, 
before  the  full  tide  and  rush  of  public  sentiment  at 
the  North  should  overtake  and  overwhelm  all  such 
mischievous  attempts. 

Texas,  upon  which  Calhoun  had  built  strong  hopes 
of  prolonged  Southern  ascendency  in  the  Union,  had 
disappointed  Southern  expectations  in  that  regard. 
Far  easier  it  was  found  to  annex  an  empire  than  to 
people  it.  The  emergency  States,  provided  for  by 
the  Bill  admitting  Texas  to  Statehood,  were  not  forth 
coming  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  slave-power. 
On  the  political  chess-board  there  was  but  a  single 
move  left  for  it  to  make,  and  that  was  the  prevention 
of  any  furthur  relative  increase  in  the  number  of 
free  States.  This  final  checkmate  that  power 
designed  to  accomplish,  by  throwing  down  the  wall 
of  partition  between  freedom  and  slavery  erected 
by  the  Missouri  Compromise.  Here,  indeed,  were 
spaces  larger  than  the  thirteen  original  States  to  be 
occupied,  to  figure,  sooner  or  later,  with  decisive 
weight  and  effect,  in  the  struggle  for  political 
supremacy  between  the  two  halves  of  the  Republic. 
The  exclusive  right  of  freedom  to  the  occupancy  of 
this  immense  region  was  to  be  set  aside,  and  to  slav 
ery  was  to  be  granted  an  equality  of  interest  and 
ownership  in  the  same.  Hence  the  powerful,  prac- 


226  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

tical  utility  of  the  "  squatter  sovereignty  "  scheme  of 
Douglas  as  an  instrument  of  demolition. 

Then,  too,  the  North  might  recall,  so  possibly  the 
South  reasoned,  that  plausible  and  pernicious  notion 
of  Webster,  of  the  futility  of  reaffirming  "  an  ordi- 
ance  of  nature,"  of  reenacting  "  the  will  of  God,"  and 
cooperate  in  the  work  of  destruction.  But  the  free 
States  did  not  take  at  all  to  the  monstrous  proposi 
tion.  It  threw  them,  on  the  contrary,  into  a  fever  of 
alarm  and  activity,  in  view  of  the  disastrous  conse 
quences,  which  impended  from  the  measure,  to  their 
interests  and  institutions.  The  self-love  and  section 
alism  of  the  North  took  fire.  Everywhere  through 
the  free  States  there  spread  and  blazed  Northern 
protestation  and  opposition  to  the  consummation  of 
the  dark  conspiracy. 

The  Repeal  fought  its  way  through  Congress  dur 
ing  four  stormy  months.  Blows  fell  upon  it  and  its 
authors,  thick  and  furious,  from  Seward,  Chase, 
Wade,  Fessenden,  Giddings,  and  Gerritt  Smith.  But 
Sumner  was  the  Colossus  of  the  hour,  the  heart  of 
flame  of  his  section.  It  was  he,  more  than  any  other, 
who  swung  the  ponderous  Northern  hammer,  and 
smote  plot  and  plotters  with  the  stern  strength  of 
the  Northern  Giant.  Such  a  speech  as  was  his 
"  Landmarks  of  Freedom,"  only  crises  breed.  It  was 
a  ground-swell  of  the  moral  throes  of  the  times,  a 
lava-tide  of  argument,  appeal,  history,  and  eloquence. 
The  august  rights  and  wrath  of  the  Northern  people 
thundered  and  lightened  along  its  rolling  lines. 

"  Accomplish  thou  thy  manhood  and  thyself,"  is 
the  cry  of  Humanity  ringing  ever  in  the  soul  of  the 
reformer.  He  must  needs  bestir  himself  in  obedience 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  227 

to  the  high  mandate.  This  labor  is  the  special  mis 
sion  of  great  men.  It  was  without  doubt  Sumner's. 
He  stood  for  the  manhood  of  the  North,  of  the  slave, 
of  the  Nation.  For  this  he  strenuously  toiled.  It 
shines  in  every  sentence  of  that  memorable  speech, 
and  of  the  shorter  one  in  defense  of  the  New  England 
clergy,  made  at  midnight,  on  that  black  Thursday  of 
May.  which  closed  the  bitter  struggle  and  consum 
mated  the  act  of  repeal. 

Here  is  a  passage  from  the  latter  of  these  speeches: 
"From  the  depths  of  my  soul,  as  loyal  citizen  and 
as  Senator,  I  plead,  remonstrate,  protest,  against  the 
passage  of  this  bill.  I  struggle  against  it  as  against 
death;  but,  as  in  death  itself  corruption  puts  on  im 
mortality,  so  from  the  sting  of  this  hour  I  find  assur 
ance  of  that  triumph  by  which  freedom  will  be  re 
stored  to  her  immortal  birthright  in  the  Republic. 

"  Sir,  the  bill  you  are  about  to  pass  is  at  once  the  worst 
and  the  best  on  which  Congress  ever  acted.  Yes,  sir,  WORST 
and  BEST  at  the  same  time. 

"  It  is  the  worst  bill,  inasmuch  as  it  is  a  present 
victory  of  slavery.  .  .  .  Among  the  crimes  of 
history  another  is  soon  to  be  recorded,  which  no 
tears  can  blot  out,  and  which,  in  better  days,  will  be 
read  with  universal  shame.  Do  not  start.  The  Tea 
Tax  and  Stamp  Act,  which  aroused  the  patriot  rage 
of  our  fathers,  were  virtues  by  the  side  of  your  trans 
gression;  nor  would  it  be  easy  to  imagine,  at  this 
day,  any  measure  which  more  openly  defied  every 
sentiment  of  justice,  humanity,  and  Christianity.  Am 
I  not  right,  then,  in  calling  it  the  worst  bill  on  which 
Congress  ever  acted  ? 

"  There  is  another  side,  to  which  I  gladly  turn.    Sir, 


228  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

it  is  the  best  bill  on  which  Congress  ever  acted;  for 
it  annuls  all  past  compromises  with  slavery,  and  makes 
any  future  compromises  impossible.  Thus,  it  puts  free 
dom  and  slavery  face  to  face,  and  bids  them  grapple. 
Who  can  doubt  the  result?  It  opens  wide  the  door 
of  the  future,  when,  at  last  there  will  really  be  a 
North,  and  the  slave-power  will  be  broken — when 
this  wretched  despotism  will  cease  to  dominate  over 
our  Government,  no  longer  impressing  itself  upon 
everything  at  home  and  abroad — when  the  National 
Government  will  be  divorced  in  every  way  from 
slavery,  and,  according  to  the  true  intention  of  our 
fathers,  freedom  will  be  established  by  Congress 
everywhere,  at  least  beyond  the  local  limits  of  the 
States. 

"  Slavery  will  then  be  driven  from  usurped  foot 
hold  here  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  in  the  National 
Territories,  and  elsewhere  beneath  the  national  flag; 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill  (Sumner  would  never  call  it 
Law),  as  vile  as  it  is  unconstitutional,  will  become  a 
dead  letter;  and  the  domestic  slave-trade,  so  far  as  it 
can  be  reached,  but  especially  on  the  high  seas,  will 
be  blasted  by  Congressional  Prohibition.  Every 
where  within  the  sphere  of  Congress,  the  great 
Northern  Hammer  will  descend  to  smite  the  wrong; 
and  the  irresistible  cry  will  break  forth,  '  No  more 
slave  States  !  ' ' 

Significant  enough,  had  the  South  ears  to  interpret 
it  aright,  was  the  prolonged  applause  in  the  galleries, 
which  greeted  a  passage  from  the  earlier  speech,  in 
which  the  orator  likened  the  power  of  slavery  in 
loosening  and  destroying  the  character  of  Northern 
men  to  the  fabled  influence  of  the  black  magnetic 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  229 

mountain  in  the  Arabian  story,  whereby  "  the  iron 
bolts  which  held  together  the  strong  timbers  of  a 
stately  ship,  floating  securely  on  the  distant  wave, 
were  drawn  out,  till  the  whole  fell  apart,  and  became 
a  disjointed  wreck."  So  were  the  principles  of 
Northern  representatives  sucked  out  by  the  black 
magnetic  mountain  of  the  slave-power,  "  and  from 
the  miserable  loosened  fragments  is  found  that 
human  anomaly,  a  Northern  man  with  Southern 
principles."  "Sir,"  exclaimed  the  orator,  "  no  such 
man  can  speak  for  the  North,"  and  thereupon 
the  galleries  burst  into  applause.  Freedom  had 
grown  bolder.  It  had  invaded  the  Senate  Chamber, 
it  had  invaded  also  the  galleries  of  that  Chamber, 
with  unwonted  sounds  and  emotions.  They  were  the 
burning  brands,  borne  by  the  swift  rising  winds  of 
public  opinion  at  the  North  from  the  fierce  fires, 
spreading  and  blazing  from  one  end  of  that  section 
to  the  other  against  the  monumental  perfidy  and 
iniquity  of  the  slave-power,  in  throwing  down  the 
sacred  landmark  of  Liberty,  erected  by  the  Missouri 
Compromise. 

The  monition  of  Sumner,  that  the  passage  of  the 
act  of  repeal  would  mark  the  close  of  an  era  of  com 
promises,  was  made  also  by  William  H.  Seward  in 
different  words,  but  with  not  less  certainty  of 
sense.  "  The  shifting  sands  of  compromise,"  said  he 
to  the  Senate,  "  are  passing  from  under  my  feet,  and 
they  are  now,  without  agency  of  my  own,  taking 
hold  again  on  the  rock  of  the  Constitution.  It  shall 
be  no  fault  of  mine  if  they  do  not  remain  firm.  This 
seems  to  me  auspicious  of  better  days  and  wiser 
legislation.  Through  all  the  darkness  and  gloom  of 


230  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  present  hour  bright  stars  are  breaking,  that 
inspire  me  with  hope  and  excite  me  to  perseverance." 
The  greed  of  the  South  had  overreached  itself.  For, 
in  attempting  to  seize  fresh  advantages  in  its  contest 
with  the  North  for  the  political  balance  of  the 
federal  system,  it  had,  by  the  passionate  fears  and 
the  deep  sense  of  injury  thereby  aroused  toward  it 
throughout  that  section,  unwittingly  put  in  peril  its 
erstwhile  strong,  almost  impregnable,  position  in  the 
Union.  The  conduct  of  the  South  at  this  juncture 
of  the  irrepressible  conflict,  furnished  another  illus 
tration  of  the  truth  of  the  saying  "  That  whom  the 
gods  would  destroy,  they  first  make  mad."  Madder, 
and  yet  more  mad,  from  this  time,  grew  the  slave 
section. 

Sumner's  bold  and  uncompromising  tone,  pending 
the  great  debate,  mightily  incensed  the  South  against 
him.  ;This  feeling  of  growing  hate  and  hostility 
toward  him  on  the  part  of  the  slave-power  was 
fanned  almost  into  open  violence  by  an  incident, 
arising  out  of  the  execution  of  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  in  Boston,  and  which  occurred  on  the  evening  of 
May  26th,  in  the  morning  of  which  Sumner  concluded 
his  midnight  speech  on  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill. 
This  was  the  attempt  to  rescue  Anthony  Burns  by  a 
number  of  citizens,  who  attacked  the  court-house 
where  the  fugitive  slave  was  confined  for  safe  keep 
ing,  and  during  which  one  of  the  slave-guard  was 
killed  by  a  pistol  shot  from  the  rescuing  party.  The 
news  of  this  attempt  to  defeat  the  execution  of  the 
Slave  Law,  and  of  the  killing  of  one  of  the  guard  in 
the  melee,  produced  a  profound  sensation  in  Wash 
ington,  aroused  the  worst  passions  against  Sumner, 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  23! 

who  was  immediately  charged  with  responsibility  for 
the  act,  and  denounced  by  administrative  organs  as  a 
"  murderer,"  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  at  the 
hour  of  the  attack  upon  the  court-house  the  speech  of 
the  Massachusetts  Senator,  to  which  the  South 
attributed  the  tragedy,  had  not  then  reached  Boston. 
It  was  not  until  the  next  day  that  it  arrived,  by 
mail,  in  the  city.  But  the  South  was  in  no  rational 
mood  for  the  reception  of  such  swift  fulfillment  of 
Sumner's  prediction,  that  the  abrogation  of  the 
Compromise  of  1820  would  "  scatter  dragon's  teeth, 
fructify  in  civil  strife  and  feud."  Even  while  he  was 
speaking,  the  dragon's  teeth  were  fructifying  in  the 
stony  soil  of  the  Bay  State. 

And  now  a  cry  was  raised  against  Sumner,  a  cry  of 
insane  hate,  of  gathering  malignity,  on  the  part  of 
the  slave-power.  He  was  ruthlessly  assailed  by  the 
Union  and  the  Star,  organs  of  the  administration,  in 
language  plainly  intended  to  make  him  odious  at  the 
capital,  and  to  provoke  against  him  violence  of  some 
sort,  open  or  secret.  "  Boston  in  arms  against  the 
Constitution,"  inveighed  the  former  journal,  "  and  an 
Abolition  fanatic,  the  distant  leader,  safe  from  the 
fire  and  the  fagot,  he  invokes  from  his  seat  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States,  giving  the  command.  Men 
shot  down  in  the  faithful  discharge  of  duty  to  a  law 
based  upon  a  Constitutional  guaranty,  and  the  word 
which  encourages  the  assassin  given  by  a  man  who  has 
sworn  on  the  Holy  Evangelist  and  the  presence  of 
his  Maker  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the  coun 
try." 

"Let  Sumner  and  his  infamous  gang  feel,"  raved  the 
latter  newspaper,  "  that  he  cannot  outrage  the  fame 


232  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

of  his  country,  counsel  treason  to  its  laws,  incite  the 
ignorant  to  bloodshed  and  murder,  and  still  receive 
the  support  and  countenance  of  the  society  of  this 
city,  which  he  has  done  so  much  to  villify. 

"While  the  person  of  a  Virginia  citizen  is  only  safe 
from  rudeness  and  outrage  behind  the  serried  ranks 
of  armed  men,  Charles  Sumner  is  permitted  to  walk 
among  the  '  slave-catchers  '  and  '  fire-eaters  '  of  the 
South  in  peace  and  security." 

Thus  raged  the  Southern  heathen  against  him. 
The  sinister  appeals  to  the  mob-spirit,  by  such 
powerful  papers,  had  their  effect.  In  Alexandria, 
just  across  the  river,  the  incubatiou  of  mischief 
advanced  apace.  Violence  was  beginning  to  peck 
through  the  thin  shell  of  law  and  order  which  con 
fined  it  in  that  region.  The  air  of  the  capital  was 
full  of  ugly  rumors  of  plans  and  plots  to  put  the 
Abolition  fanatic  down.  Now  he  was  to  be  seized  as 
hostage  for  the  surrender  of  Burns,  now  to  receive 
some  personal  affront  and  violence,  now  to  have  a 
ball  put  through  his  head.  All  of  which  menaces 
were  duly  communicated  to  their  object,  witlfaview, 
doubtless,  of  driving  him  from  his  post  in  Washing 
ton.  But  those  who  sought  to  cow  him  into  flight  or 
silence,  surely  knew  him  not.  Unawed  and  unterri- 
fied,  he  pursued  the  even  tenor  of  his  ways,  walking 
to  and  from  the  Senate  by  Pennsylvania  avenue  the 
while,  as  was  his  wont,  unarmed.  One  day  at  a 
restaurant,  where  he  dined,  he  was  threatened  and 
insulted  by  a  Southern  fire-eater. 

Like  begets  like.  And  this  violent  temper  of  the 
South  begot  at  the  North  a  temper  of  similar  vio 
lence,  as  witness  the  following  written  to  Mr.  Sum- 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  233 

ner  by  gallant  Joseph  R.  Hawley,  of  Connecticut,  at 
present  a  United  States  Senator  from  that  State:  "  If 
you  really  think  there  is  any  danger  worth  mention 
ing,  I  wish  you  would  telegraph  me  instantly.  I  will 
come  to  Washington  by  the  next  train,  and  quietly 
stay  by.  I  have  revolvers,  and  can  use  them — and 
while  there  should  not  be  a  word  of  unnecessary 
provocation,  still,  if  anybody  in  Alexandria  or  Wash 
ington  really  means  to  trouble  you,  or  any  other  free 
Democrat  there,  you  know  several  can  play  at  that 
game."  This  brave  offer  of  the  future  Union  general, 
was  called  forth  by  the  alarming  rumors  in  regard  to 
Mr.  Sumner's  safety,  which  were  telegraphed  May 
3ist,  from  the  seat  of  the  Government  to  New  York 
and  other  places.  As  Mr.  Hawley  was  then  feeling,  so 
were  thousands  through  the  free  States.  If  the  blood 
of  the  South  was  fast  mounting  to  the  fighting  point, 
so  was  that  of  the  North. 

So  strong  was  the  fighting  feeling  grown  at  the 
North,  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Peace  Society,  Rev. 
George  C.  Beckwith,  who  saw  Anthony  Burns  re 
turned  to  slavery,  could,  at  thought  of  the  deed, 
write  in  this  bellicose  vein  to  Mr.  Sumner:  "  I  think  I 
am  still  true  to  my  peace  principles,  but  my  heart  is 
stirred  to  its  lowest  depths  of  indignation;  and  I  say 
frankly  to  men  who  applaud  what  our  forefathers 
did,  that  we  have  now  even  stronger  reasons  for  resist 
ance  to  the  slave-power  than  they  had  to  the  usur 
pations  of  England." 

From  this  time,  Sumner's  position  at  Washington 
became  one  of  constantly  present  peril.  Hated,  in 
sulted,  denounced,  menaced  by  mob  violence,  his  life 
was  everyday  in  jeopardy.  But  he  did  not  flinch  or 


234  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

falter.  Freedom  was  his  master,  humanity  his  guide. 
He  climbed  the  hazardous  steps  that  conducted  him 
to  duty,  heedless  of  the  dangers  which  arose  in  his 
path.  His  collisions  with  the  slave-leaders  and  their 
Northern  allies,  became  thenceforth  more  frequent 
and  fierce.  Everywhere  he  turned,  he  encountered 
increasing  intolerance  and  malignity.  All  the  powers 
of  the  man  became  braced,  eager,  alert.  It  was  many 
against  one,  but  that  one  was  in  himself  a  host,  when 
roused  as  he  was,  not  only  by  the  grandeur  of  his 
cause,  but  also  by  a  sense  of  personal  indignity  and 
persecution. 

Whoever  else  could,  he  would  not  submit  to  Sena 
torial  insult  and  bondage.  His  rising  temper  began 
to  thrust  like  a  rapier.  Scorn  he  matched  with  scorn 
and  clashed  pride  against  pride.  As  a  regiment  bris 
tles  with  bayonets,  so  bristled  he  with  the  cold  and 
glittering  steel  of  facts  and  figures,  which  mortally 
stabbed  with  the  merciless  truth  of  history  the  super 
lative  insolence  and  pretensions  of  the  South.  His 
sarcasm  was  terrific,  possessed  the  ferocity  of  a  pan 
ther.  He  upon  whom  it  sprang  got  his  quivering 
flesh  torn  away.  It  is  not  in  human  nature  to  suffer 
such  lacerations  of  the  feelings,  as  Sumner  now  in 
flicted  upon  the  South,  and  readily  forgive  or  forget 
their  author.  The  slave-power  did  not  forgive  Sum 
ner  nor  forget  its  scars. 

The  rendition  of  the  second  fugitive  slave  from 
Boston  was  a  bitter  dose  of  humiliation  and  inhuman 
ity  for  that  city  to  swallow.  With  many  of  the  mer 
chant  class,  who  had  previously  supported  the  infa 
mous  law  as  a  part  of  the  compromise  measures  of  1 850, 
and  for  the  sake  of  composing  the  differences  between 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  235 

the  two  halves  of  the  Union,  this  ocular  demonstra 
tion  of  its  atrocious  wickedness,  produced  a  decided 
feeling  of  moral  revulsion  from  the  act.  Such  were 
now  ready  to  ask  for  its  repeal,  to  wash  their  hands 
of  all  complicity  in  the  crime  of  returning  fellow- 
men  to  bondage.  They  joined  with  the  friends  of 
freedom  in  signing  a  petition  to  Congress  praying 
for  the  abrogation  of  the  law.  This  petition,  with 
the  names  of  twenty-nine  hundred  petitioners  ap 
pended,  was,  on  June  22,  1854,  presented  to  the  Senate, 
and  on  the  26th  debated  by  that  body. 

Several  Senators  had  engaged  in  the  wordy  warfare 
which  ensued,  among  whom  was  a  Mr.  G.  W.  Jones, 
of  Tennessee;  before  Mr.  Sumner  gained  the  floor, 
Mr.  Jones  had  given  the  Senate  a  taste  of  the  bully 
ing  assurance  of  his  section  in  debate,  and  had  put 
the  question  "  Can  anyone  suppose  that,  if  the  Fugi 
tive  Slave  Act  be  repealed,  this  Union  can  exist?" 
with  the  air  of  a  champion  who  flings  his  gage  of  bat 
tle  down  and  dares  any  man  to  pick  it  up.  Sumner, 
in  beginning  his  speech,  lifted  the  insolent  challenge 
and  threw  it  full  in  the  face  of  the  doughty  Tennes- 
seean,  thus:  "Mr  President — I  begin  by  answering 
the  interrogatory  propounded  by  the  Senator  from 
Tennessee  (Mr.  Jones):  'Can  any  one  suppose,  that, 
if  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  be  repealed,  this  Union  can 
exist?'  To  which  I  reply  at  once,  that,  if  the  Union 
be  in  any  way  dependent  on  an  act — I  cannot  call  it 
a  law — so  revolting  in  every  respect  as  that  to  which 
he  refers,  then  it  ought  not  to  exist.  To  much  else 
that  has  fallen  from  that  Senator  I  do  not  desire  to 
reply.  Matters  already  handled  again  and  again,  in 
the  long-drawn-out  debates  of  this  session,  he  has 


236  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

discussed  at  length.  Like  the  excited  hero  of  Mace 
donia,  he  has  renewed  past  conflicts — 'And  thrice  Jie 
routed  all  his  foes,  and  thrice  he  slew  the  slain.'  " 

With  this  half-playful,  half-dangerous  attention  to 
Mr.  Jones,  he  shoves  him  into  space  and  attacks  the 
subject  of  debate,  restating  his  arguments  against 
the  constitutionality  of  the  Slave  Act,  repeating  his 
historical  parallel  between  it  and  the  Stamp  Act, 
reiterating  his  stern  denunciation  of  it,  as  in  violation 
of  the  law  of  God,  and  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  All  of  which  was  by  no  means  calcu 
lated  to  soften  the  feelings  of  the  South  toward  him, 
or  to  turn  from  him  its  growing  rage.  On  the  con 
trary,  they  hardened  the  hatred  of  that  section  toward 
him,  and  unloosed  upon  him  a  pack  of  furious  South 
ern  representatives,  abetted  and  outdone  by  a  North 
ern  man  with  Southern  principles,  John  Pettit,  of 
Indiana. 

Half  a  dozen  irate  Senators,  when  Mr.  Sumner  sat 
down,  proceeded  to  assail  him  with  an  acrimony  and 
brutality,  that  went  beyond  anything  of  the  kind 
before  perpetrated  by  the  Southern  side  of  the  Senate 
in  debate.  A.  P.  Butler,  of  South  Carolina,  and 
James  M.  Mason,  of  Virginia,  author  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Bill,  were  coarsely  and  savagely  insolent  and 
offensive  ;  but,  for  that  matter,  the  four  other  assail 
ants  of  the  Massachusetts  Senator,  were  coarsely  and 
savagely  insolent  and  offensive  to  a  high  degree. 
These  others  it  is  well  to  remember,  and  I  shall  there 
fore  name  them.  They  were  C.  C.  Clay,  of  Alabama, 
A.  Dixon,  of  Kentucky,  Stephen  R.  Mallory,  of 
Florida,  afterward  Secretary  of  the  Navy  in  the 
cabinet  of  Jefferson  Davis,  and  that  "human  anom- 


DEFENDER    OF    HUMANITY.  237 

aly,"  named  above,  a  Northern  man  with  Southern 
principles. 

Those  were  the  slave  champions,  who,  one  after 
another,  flung  themselves  upon  the  thick  bosses  of 
Sumner's  shield,  with  a  violence  and  virulence  of 
vituperation  more  beseeming  the  manners  of  a  slave 
plantation,  than  the  dignity  and  order  of  the  upper 
branch  of  the  National  Legislature.  In  the  midst  of 
his  excitement  and  tirade,  Mr.  Butler,  turning  to  Mr. 
Sumner,  demanded  to  know  whether  he  would  return 
a  fugitive  slave;  and  got  the  swift  and  crushing 
retort:  "  Is  thy  servant  a  dog,  that  he  should  do  this 
thing?"  Whereupon  the  Carolinian  was  thrown 
into  a  state  of  mind  in  which  his  fury  and  amaze 
ment  at  such  unheard-of  audacity  on  the  part  of  a 
Northern  Senator,  quite  got  the  better  of  him.  And, 
when,  to  his  apoplectic  interrogatory,  "  You  stand  in 
my  presence  as  a  coequal  Senator,  and  tell  me  that 
it  is  a  dog's  office  to  execute  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  ?  "  Sumner  quietly  remarked,  "  I  recog 
nize  no  such  obligation,"  meaning,  of  course,  to  return 
fugitive  slaves  to  their  masters;  the  Southerner's  men 
tal  condition  may  be  better  imagined  than  de 
scribed. 

Mr.  Mason,  who  was  to  add  to  his  evil  eminence, 
as  the  author  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill,  a  sorry  and 
sensational  distinction  in  connection  with  the  War 
of  the  Rebellion,  was  no  whit  behind  Mr.  Butler  in 
insolence  and  violence  of  behavior  and  speech. 
"Why,  sir,"  he  cried,  "  am  I  speaking  of  a  fanatic, 
one  whose  reason  is  dethroned  ?  Can  such  a  one  ex 
pect  to  make  impressions  upon  the  American  people 
from  his  vapid,  vulgar  declamation  here,  accom- 


238  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

panied  by  a  declaration  that  he  would  violate  his 
oath  now  recently  taken  ?  " 

Through  two  days  the  assailants  of  Mr.  Sumner 
ran  the  debate,  if  debate  it  can  be  called,  in  which 
every  note  in  alternation,  and  sometimes  altogether, 
in  the  gamut  of  rage  and  hate,  was  sounded  and 
resounded  by  them.  On  the  second  day  of  the  at 
tack  upon  him,  Sumner  obtained  the  floor  and  replied 
to  his  assailants  in  a  speech,  which,  cutting  deep  into 
the  pride  and  pretensions  of  the  South,  rankled  long 
afterward  in  the  bosoms  of  her  representatives. 
Mercilessly  he  returned  blow  for  blow  upon  the  heads 
of  his  foes. 

The  opening  sentences  of  his  reply  he  fired  at 
his  assailants  collectively,  thus  :  "  Mr.  President — 
Since  I  had  the  honor  of  addressing  the  Senate  two 
days  ago,  various  Senators  have  spoken.  Of  these, 
several  have  alluded  to  me  in  terms  clearly  beyond 
the  sanction  of  parliamentary  debate.  Of  this  I 
make  no  complaint,  though,  for  the  honor  of  the  Se 
nate,  at  least,  it  were  well,  had  it  been  otherwise.  If 
to  them  it  seems  fit,  courteous,  parliamentary,  let 
them 

"    Unpack  the  heart  with  words, 

And  fall  a-cursing,  like  a  very  drab, 

A  scullion : ' 

I  will  not  interfere  with  the  enjoyment  they  find  in 
such  exposure  of  themselves.  They  have  given  us  a 
taste  of  their  quality." 

After  this  preliminary  defiance  of  the  Senatorial 
bunch  of  his  assailants,  he  selected  two  of  the  com 
pany  for  more  particular  and  energetic  attention. 
These  were  Messrs.  Butler  and  Mason,  whom  he  pro- 


DEFENDER   OF    HUMANITY.  239 

ceeded  immediately  to  acquaint  with  his  own  qual 
ity,  to  teach  how  to  be  severe  and  parliamentary  at 
the  same  time.  Their  behavior  reminded  him  of 
Jefferson's  picture  of  the  influence  of  slavery  upon 
the  master-class.  The  parent  storms,  and  the  child 
looks  on  and  imitates  what  he  sees  in  the  circle  of 
smaller  slaves,  etc.  The  great  Virginian  adjudged 
that  master  a  prodigy  who  was  able  to  "  retain  his 
manners  and  morals  undepraved  by  such  circumstances." 
But  Sumner  was  certain  that  "  Nobody,  who  wit 
nessed  the  Senator  from  South  Carolina  or  the  Sen 
ator  from  Virginia  in  this  debate,  will  place  either  of 
them  among  the  'prodigies'  described  by  Jefferson." 

In  this  wise  he  met  the  accusation  that  he  had 
disowned  the  obligations  of  the  Constitution:  "In 
swearing  to  support  the  Constitution  at  your  desk, 
Mr.  President,  I  did  not  swear  to  support  it  as  you 
understand  it — oh,  no,  sir! — or  as  the  Senator  from 
Virginia  understands  it — by  no  means  ! — or  as  the 
Senator  from  South  Carolina  understands  it,  with  a 
kennel  of  bloodhounds,  or  at  least,  a  'dog'  in  it, 
'  pawing  to  get  free  his  hinder  parts,  in  pursuit  of  a 
slave.'  No  such  thing.  Sir,  I  swore  to  support  the 
Constitution  as  I  understand  it — nor  more,  nor 
less." 

Mr.  Butler  had,  in  the  course  of  his  assault  on  Mr. 
Sumner,  and  with  the  customary  swagger  and  pre 
tensions  of  his  class,  boasted  that  the  independence 
of  America  was  won  by  the  arms  and  treasure  of 
slave-holding  communities.  To  this  grandiose  as 
sertion,  Sumner  replied,  with  a  thoroughness  of 
knowledge,  a  skill  of  statement,  a  weight  and  scorn 
of  diction,  which  pulverized  the  false  and  foolish 


240  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

vaunt,  and  humbled  the  pride  of  its  author,  and  the 
insolent  assumptions  of  his  State  and  section,  in  the 
dust  and  vanity  of  it. 

While  Sumner  was  pounding  upon  this  overween 
ing  laudation  of  slave-holding  communities,  and  was 
in  the  way  of  reducing  it  to  powder  with  the  great 
Northern  hammer,  its  author  without  rising  from 
his  seat,  attempted  to  break  the  force  of  the  blows 
which  he  was  receiving,  by  a  remark  in  interruption 
of  the  Northern  giant.  But  Sumner  was  in  no  mood 
to  let  pass  unnoticed  such  a  piece  of  bad  parliamen 
tary  manners,  and,  accordingly,  administered  to  the 
offender  a  fit  rebuke  on  the  spot.  "And  now,  sir, 
the  venerable  Senator  not  rising  from  his  seat  and 
standing  openly  before  the  Senate,  undertakes  to  deny 
that  he  has  dealt  in  such  comparisons."  It  is  need 
less  to  say  that,  after  this  incident,  Mr.  Butler  ob 
served,  the  next  time  he  wished  to  interrupt  his  Mas 
sachusetts  antagonist,  the  etiquette  of  debate,  rising 
from  his  seat  and  first  addressing  Mr.  Sumner  with 
the  customary  "  Will  the  Senator  allow  me  ?" — which 
did  not  fail  to  elicit  the  speaker's  dignified  and  in 
variable  response,  in  that  regard;  "Certainly:  I  yield 
the  floor  to  the  Senator." 

But,  perhaps,  the  most  effective  and  characteristic 
stroke  of  his  reply  was  the  spirited  manner  in  which 
he  met  the  peremptory  assertion  of  Mr.  Mason,  that 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  does  not  deny  the  Habeas 
Corpus.  But  here  is  the  passage  alluded  to,  which  is 
given  entire: 

*'  And  now,  for  the  present,  I  part  with  the  vener 
able  Senator  from  South  Carolina.  Pursuing  his  in 
consistencies,  and  exposing  them  to  judgment,  I  had 


DEFENDER   OF    HUMANITY.  24! 

almost  forgotten  his  associate  leader  in  the  wanton 
personal  assault  upon  me  in  this  long  debate — I  mean 
the  veteran  Senator  from  Virginia  [Mr.  Mason],  who 
is  now  directly  in  my  eye.  With  imperious  look, 
and  in  the  style  of  Sir  Forcible  Feeble,  that  Senator 
undertakes  to  call  in  question  my  statement,  that  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Act  denies  the  writ  of  Habeas  Cor 
pus;  and  in  doing  this,  he  assumes  a  superiority  for 
himself,  which,  permit  me  to  tell  him  now  in  this 
presence,  nothing  in  him  can  warrant.  Sir,  I  claim 
little  for  myself  ;  but  I  shrink  in  no  respect  from  any 
comparison  with  the  Senator,  veteran  though  he  be. 
Sitting  near  him,  as  has  been  my  fortune,  since  I  had 
the  honor  of  a  seat  in  this  chamber,  I  came  to  know 
something  of  his  conversation,  something  of  his  man 
ners,  something  of  his  attainments,  something  of  his 
abilities,  something  of  his  character — ay,  sir,  and 
something  of  his  associations;  and  while  I  would  not 
disparage  him  in  these  respects,  I  feel  that  I  do  not 
exalt  myself  unduly,  that  I  do  not  claim  too  much 
for  the  position  which  I  hold  or  the  name  which  I 
have  established,  when  I  openly  declare,  that,  as 
Senator  of  Massachusetts,  and  as  a  man,  I  place  my 
self  at  every  point  in  unhesitating  comparison  with 
that  honorable  assailant.  And  to  his  peremptory 
assertion,  that  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  does  not  deny 
the  Habeas  Corpus,  I  oppose  my  assertion,  peremp 
tory  as  his  own,  that  it  does — and  there  I  leave  that 
issue." 

When  Mr.  Sumner  had  made  an  end  of  his  reply, 

Mr.  Chase,  who  sat  next  to  him,  greeted   him  with 

the  words,  "  You  have  struck  slavery  the  strongest 

blow  it  ever  received  ;  you  have  made  it  reel  to  the 

16 


242  CHARLES   SUMMER. 

centre."  And  all  things  considered,  taking  the 
matter  and  the  manner  of  that  speech,  this  estimate 
of  it  by  so  competent  a  judge  as  was  Mr.  Chase,  is, 
perhaps,  not  in  excess  of  its  deserts.  It  was,  in 
deed,  a  staggering  blow,  which  it  dealt  the  slave- 
power  and  its  champions  in  the  Senate.  There  were 
suggestions  made  for  his  expulsion  from  that  body. 
And  for  a  while  there  is  no  doubt  that  some  such 
scheme  was  seriously  entertained  by  his  enemies  of 
avenging  themselves  and  the  outraged  self-love  of 
their  section,  upon  him,  the  ruthless  Northern  giant, 
with  his  terrible  trip-hammer  attachment. 

The  proposed  act  of  expulsion  was  to  be  based 
upon  Sumner's  alleged  refusal  to  recognize  the  obliga 
tions  of  the  Constitution.  He  had  not  refused  to  re 
cognize  the  obligations  of  the  Constitution,  only  the 
obligations  of  the  Constitution  to  return  fugitive  slaves. 
This  he  distinctly  and  repeatedly  refused  to  recognize. 
And  this  refusal  his  enemies  attempted  to  distort 
into  a  denial  of  the  obligation  of  his  oath  to  support 
the  Constitution.  The  project  of  expulsion  was, 
however,  finally  abandoned,  and  Mr.  Sumner  was  sent 
to  Coventry  instead. 

Mr.  Sumner's  splendid  reply  to  his  assailants, 
while  it  augmented  the  intense  and  intolerable  hate 
of  the  South  toward  him,  added  at  the  same  time 
vastly  to  his  popularity  and  influence  in  Massachu 
setts  and  through  the  free  States  generally.  He  was 
probably,  at  the  moment,  the  most  conspicuous 
representative  of  freedom,  in  public  life,  at  the 
North.  He  was  certainly  the  transcendent  figure  in 
public  life  in  Massachusetts. 

John     P.   Hale,   on   his    way  from   Washington  to 


DEFENDER  OF  HUMANITY.  243 

New  York,  heard  but  one  expression,  in  steamboat 
and  railroad  car,  and  that  from  people  of  every 
political  complexion,  in  regard  to  the  speech.  It 
was  one  of  "  unmingled  gratification,"  on  the  part  of 
the  gentler  sex  especially,  he  added.  William  I. 
Bovvditch  wrote  from  Boston  :  "One  gentleman  whom 
I  saw  this  forenoon  said  that  he  involuntarily  gave 
three  cheers  when  he  had  finished  reading  your  speech ; 
and  an  '  old  Hunker  '  said  to  me  smilingly,  *  I  really 
don't  know  but  that  I  shall  myself  come  out  a 
Sumner  man.'  '  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  who  was  at 
tending  court  at  Concord,  Mass.,  and  seeing  people 
of  all  parties,  heard  but  one  sentiment  expressed  in 
regard  to  the  great  topic  of  conversation,  Sumner's 
reply  to  his  assailants,  and  that  was  of  approval. 
Daniel  Shattuck  wrote  :  "  Being  one  of  the  old-time 
Whigs,  I  was  not  pleased  with  your  election  to  the 
high  seat  which  you  hold  ;  for  that  opinion  you  will 
forgive  me,  I  am  sure,  when  I  say  that  I  go  with  you 
now  heart  and  soul,  and  approve  all  you  have  said 
in  defense  of  your  .native  State,  whose  sons  I 
know  approve  your  course  and  wish  you  God 
speed." 

All  of  which  indicated  the  good  progress  that  the 
freedom-power  was  making  in  the  North,  for  the 
development  of  which  Sumner,  in  and  out  of  Con 
gress,  was  strenuously  striving.  Certainly,  there  was 
a  revolution  in  public  sentiment  on  the  subject  of 
slavery,  progressing  on  a  grand  scale,  through  the 
free  States,  aided  signally,  now  by  one  thing,  now  by 
another.  Now  it  was  hurried  forward  by  the  execu 
tion  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act,  now  by  the  abrogation 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  now  by  such  scenes 


244  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

in  Congress  and  such  an  exhibition  of  backbone  and 
power  in  a  Northern  representative  as  have  just  been 
depicted.  The  title  "  Defender  of  Humanity,"  rejected 
by  Webster,  had,  through  brave  words  and  brave 
deeds,  become  Sumner's. 


CHAPTER   X. 

STRUGGLING     FOR     THE     FLOOR. 

IN  the  Senate,  and  in  the  House  also,  every  move 
ment  of  the  friends  of  freedom  was  met  and  op 
posed  by  the  intolerant  spirit  and  obstructive  tactics 
of  the  friends  of  slavery.  It  was  exceedingly  diffi 
cult  to  obtain  the  floor,  in  either  branch  of  Congress, 
for  the  introduction  of  matter  in  the  interest  of  lib 
erty,  while  in  all  measures  pertaining  to  slavery,  it 
was  quite  the  reverse.  Slavery  had  the  right  of  way 
every  day  and  every  hour  during  the  continuance  of 
the  sessions  of  the  two  branches  of  the  National 
Legislature,  and  freedom  had  to  stand  aside  or  get 
ground  under  the  Juggernaut  wheels  of  its  arrogant 
adversary. 

Here  is  a  Senatorial  instance  of  just  this  sort  of 
thing,  included  by  Mr.  Sumner  in  the  edition  of 
his  works,  and  reproduced  by  him  from  the  Con 
gressional  Globe.  The  day  is  July  31,  1854,  and  the 
occasion  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Pensions, 
through  Mr.  Seward,  of  a  bill  for  the  relief  of  the 
aged  widow  of  a  soldier  of  the  war  of  1812,  who  had 
died  of  wounds  received  therein.  The  moment  the 
measure  was  introduced,  a  Southern  Senator  moved 
an  amendment,  granting  a  pension  to  the  widow  of 
the  man  who  was  killed  in  the  attempted  rescue  of 
Anthony  Burns  from  the  Court-House  in  Boston  on  the 


246  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

evening  of  the  26th  of  the  previous  May,  as  the  reader 
will  doubtless  recall.  Being  clearly  in  the  interest  of 
slavery,  and  notwithstanding  objections  thereto,  the 
amendment  was  adopted.  Thereupon  Mr.  Sumner 
moved  an  amendment,  repealing  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Act,  which  was,  of  course,  promptly  ruled  out  of 
order  as  not  "germane  to  the  bill  under  consideration." 
The  bill  for  the  relief  of  the  widow  of  a  hero  of  the 
war  of  1812,  together  with  the  amendment  for  the  re 
lief  of  the  widow  of  a  volunteer  hireling  in  the  execu 
tion  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  were  put  upon  their 
passage.  At  this  stage  of  the  business,  Mr.  Sumner 
springs  to  his  feet,  when  ensues  the  following  strug 
gle  between  him,  aided  by  friends,  and  the  slave- 
power  : 

MR.  SUMNER — In  pursuance  of  notice,  I  now  ask 
leave  to  introduce  a  bill. 

MR.  STUART  (of  Michigan) — I  object  to  it,  and  move 
to  take  up  the  River  and  Harbor  Bill. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER  (MR.  COOPER,  of  Pennsyl 
vania) — The  other  bill  is  not  disposed  of,  the  third 
reading  of  a  bill  for  the  relief  of  Betsy  Nash. 

The  bill  was  then  read  a  third  time  and  passed. 

MR.  SUMNER — In  pursuance  of  notice,  I  ask  leave 
to  introduce  a  bill,  which  I  now  send  to  the  table. 

MR.  STUART — Is  that  in  order? 

MR.  SUMNER — Why  not? 

MR.  BENJAMIN  (of  Louisiana) — There  is  a  pending 
motion  of  the  Senator  from  Michigan  to  take  up  the 
River  and  Harbor  Bill. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — That  motion  was  not  en 
tertained,  because  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts 
had  and  has  the  floor. 


STRUGGLING    FOR     THE    FLOOR.  247 

MR.  STUART — I  make  the  motion  now. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair  thinks  it  is  in 
order  to  give  the  notice. 

MR.  SUMNER. — Notice  has  been  given,  and  I  now, 
in  pursuance  of  notice,  introduce  the  bill.  The  ques 
tion  is  on  its  first  reading. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  first  reading  of  a 
bill. 

MR.  NORRIS  (of  New  Hampshire) — I  rise  to  a  ques 
tion  of  order. 

MR.  SUMNER — I  believe  that  I  have  the  floor. 

MR.  NORRIS — But  I  rise  to  a  question  of  order.  I 
submit  that  that  is  not  the  question.  The  Senator 
from  Massachusetts  has  given  notice  that  he  would 
ask  leave  to  introduce  a  bill.  He  now  asks  that 
leave.  If  there  is  objection,  the  question  must  be  de 
cided  by  the  Senate  whether  he  shall  have  leave  or 
not.  Objection  is  made  and  the  bill  cannot  be  read. 

MR.  SUMNER — Very  well  ;  the  first  question,  then, 
is  on  granting  leave,  and  the  title  of  the  bill  will  be 
read. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER  (to  the  Secretary) — Read 
the  title.  The  Secretary  read  it  as  follows  :  "  A  Bill 
to  repeal  the  Act  of  Congress  approved  September 
18,  1850,  for  the  surrender  of  fugitives  from  service  or 
labor." 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  question  is  on  grant 
ing  leave  to  introduce  the  bill. 

MR.  SUMNER — And  I  have  the  floor. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Senator  from-  Mas- 
sachussetts  is  entitled  to  the  floor. 

MR.  SUMNER — I  shall  not  occupy  much  time,  nor 
shall  I  debate  the  bill.  Some  time  ago,  Mr.  President, 


248  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

after  the  presentation  of  the  Memorial  from  Boston, 
signed  by  twenty-nine  hundred  citizens  without  dis 
tinction  of  party,  I  gave  notice  that  I  should,  at  a 
day  thereafter,  ask  leave  to  introduce  a  bill  for  the 
repeal  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act.  Desirous,  however, 
not  to  proceed  prematurely,  I  awaited  the  action 
of  the  Committee  on  the  Judiciary,  to  which  the 
Memorial,  and  others  of  a  similar  character,  were 
referred.  At  length  an  adverse  report  was  made, 
and  accepted  by  the  Senate.  From  the  time  of  that 
report  down  to  this  moment,  I  have  sought  an  oppor 
tunity  to  introduce  this  bill.  Now,  at  last,  I  have  it. 
At  a  former  session,  sir,  in  introducing  a  similar 
proposition,  I  considered  it  at  length,  in  an  argument 
which  I  fearlessly  assert — 

MR.  GWIN  (of  California) — I  rise  to  a  point  of 
order.  Has  the  Senator  a  right  to  debate  the  question, 
or  say  anything  on  it  until  leave  be  granted  ? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — My  impression  is  that  the 
question  is  not  debatable.1 

MR.  SUMNER — I  propose  simply  to  explain  my  bill, 
to  make  a  statement,  not  an  argument. 

MR.  GWIN — I  make  the  point  of  order. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — I  am  not  aware  precisely 
what  the  rule  of  order  on  the  subject  is;  but  I  have 
the  impression  that  the  Senator  cannot  debate — 

MR.  SUMNER — The  distinction  is  this — 

MR.  GWIN — I  insist  upon  the  application  of  the 
decision  of  the  Chair. 

MR.   MASON  (of  Virginia) — Mr.   President,  there   is 


1  Mr.  Sumner  has  pointed  out  that  nothing  is  clearer,  under  the 
rules  of  the  Senate,  than  that  he  was  in  order  when,  introducing 
his  bill,  he  proceeded  to  state  the  causes  for  doing  so. 


STRUGGLING    FOR     THE    FLOOR.  249 

one  rale  of  order  that  is  undoubted  :  that,  when  the 
Chair  is  stating  a  question  of  order,  he  must  not  be 
interrupted  by  a  Senator.  There  is  no  question  about 
that  rule  of  order. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Senator  did  not  in 
terrupt  the  Chair. 

MR.  SUMNER — The  Chair  does  me  justice  in  response 
to  the  injustice  of  the  Senator  from  Virginia. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — Order!  order  ! 

MR.  MASON — The  Senator  is  doing  that  very  thing 
at  this  moment.  I  am  endeavoring  to  sustain  the 
authority  of  the  Chair,  which  certainly  has  been 
violated. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — It  is  the  opinion  of  the 
Chair  that  the  debate  is  out  of  order.  I  am  not  pre 
cisely  informed  of  what  the  rule  is,  but  such  is  my 
clear  impression. 

MR.  WALKER  (of  Wisconsin) — If  the  Senator  from 
Massachusetts  will  allow  me,  I  will  say  a  word  here. 

MR.  SUMNER — Certainty. 

MR.  WALKER — It  is  usual,  upon  notice  being  given 
of  intention,  to  ask  leave  to  introduce  a  bill.  The 
bill  is  sent  to  the  Chair,  and  it  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  the  Senator  asking  it  has  leave.  But  in 
this  instance,  differing  from  the  usual  practice,  objec 
tion  has  been  made  to  leave  being  granted.  The 
necessity  is  imposed,  then,  of  taking  the  sense  of  the 
Senate  on  granting  leave  to  the  Senator  to  introduce 
his  bill.  That,  then,  becomes  the  question.  The 
question  for  the  Chair  to  put  is,  Shall  the  Senator 
have  leave  ? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — That  was  the  question 
proposed. 


250  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

MR.  WALKER — Now,  sir,  it  does  seem  to  me  that  it 
is  proper,  and  that  it  is  in  order,  for  the  Senator  to 
address  himself  to  the  Senate  with  a  view  of  showing 
the  propriety  of  granting  the  leave  asked  for.  He 
has  a  right  to  show  that  there  would  be  propriety  on 
the  part  of  the  Senate  in  granting  the  leave.  I  think, 
therefore,  as  this  may  become  a  precedent  in  future 
in  regard  to  other  matters,  that  it  should  be  settled 
with  some  degree  of  deliberation. 

MR.  GWIN — Let  the  Chair  decide  the  question. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair  has  decided 
that  debate  was  not  in  order,  in  his  opinion. 

MR.  SUMNER — From  that  decision  of  the  Chair  I 
most  respectfully  take  an  appeal. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — From  that  ruling  of  the 
Chair  an  appeal  is  taken  by  the  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts.  The  question  is  on  the  appeal. 

MR.  BENJAMIN — In  order  to  put  a  stop  to  the 
whole  debate,  I  move  to  lay  the  appeal  on  the  table. 
That  is  a  motion  which  is  not  debatable, 

MR.  SUMNER — Is  that  motion  in  order? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — Certainly,  it  is  in  order.1 

MR.  WELLER  (of  California) — I  desire  to  make  one 
remark  in  regard  to  the  rule. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — It  is  not  in  order  now. 
The  question  must  be  taken  without  debate. 

MR.    SUMNER — Allow  me   to    state    the   case   as   it 


1  Mr.  Sumner  has  pointed  out  in  a  footnote  to  this  ruling  of  the 
Chair  that  the  motion  of  Mr.  Benjamin  was  clearly  out  of  order: 
first,  because  in  the  Senate  an  appeal  from  the  decision  of  the 
Chair  on  a  question  of  order  cannot  be  laid  on  the  table  ;  and,  sec 
ondly,  because  he,  himself,  was  already  on  the  floor,  so  that  Mr. 
Benjamin  could  not  make  a  motion. 


STRUGGLING    FOR    THE    FLOOR.  25  [ 

seems  to  me.  I  was  on  the  floor,  and  yielded  it  to 
the  Senator  from  Wisconsin  strictly  for  the  purpose 
of  an  explanation.  When  finished  I  was  in  possesion 
of  the  floor  ;  and  then  it  was  that  the  Senator  from 
Louisiana  on  my  right — 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — Will  the  Senator  from 
Massachussets  give  leave  to  the  Chair  to  explain  ? 

MR.  SUMNER — Certainly. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — A  point  of  order  was 
made  by  the  Senator  from  California  [MR.  GWIN], 
that  debate  was  not  in  order  upon  the  question  of 
granting  leave  ;  and  the  Chair  so  decided.  The 
Senator  from  Massachusetts  then  lost  the  floor,  as  I 
apprehend,  and  he  certainly  did  by  following  it  up 
by  an  appeal.  After  that  he  could  go  no  further. 
He  lost  the  floor  then  again  for  a  second  time,  and 
then  it  was  that  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  inter 
vened  with  another  motion,  which  is  certainly  in 
order,  to  lay  the  appeal  on  the  table.  That  is  not 
debatable.  This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  state  of  the  case. 

MR.  CHASE  (of  Ohio)— Will  the  Chair  allow  me  to 
make  a  single  statement  ? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — Certainly. 

MR.  CHASE — The  Senator  from  Massachusetts  rose 
and  held  the  floor  during  the  suggestion  made  to  the 
Chair  by  the  Senator  from  Wisconsin.  The  Chair 
then,  after  the  Senator  from  Wisconsin  had  finished 
his  suggestion,  declared  his  opinion  to  be,  notwith 
standing  the  suggestion,  that  debate  was  not  in 
order.  The  Senator  from  Massachusetts  then  took 
an  appeal,  and  retained  the  floor  for  the  purpose  of 
addressing  the  Senate  on  that  appeal.  While  he 
occupied  the  floor,  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  rose 


252  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

and  moved  to  lay  the  appeal  upon  the  table.  That 
will  be  borne  out  by  the  gentlemen  present. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — That  is  so  ;  but  the 
Chair  does  not  understand  that  debate  was  in  order 
on  the  appeal.  The  appeal  was  to  be  decided  with 
out  debate,  and  therefore  the  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts  necessarily  lost  the  floor  after  he  took  his 
appeal. 

MR.  BELL  (of  Tennessee) — I  would  inquire  whether 
there  is  not  a  bill  already  pending  for  the  repeal  of 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  ? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — I  have  not  inquired  of 
the  Secretary,  but  it  is  my  belief  there  is  a  similar 
bill  pending  ;  but  it  was  not  on  that  ground  the 
Chair  made  this  ruling. 

MR.  BELL — I  would  inquire  whether  there  is  not 
such  a  bill  pending?  Did  not  the  honorable  Senator 
from  Ohio  some  time  ago  bring  in  such  a  bill  ? 

MR.  WELLER — I  think  he  did. 

MR.  CHASE — No,  sir. 

MR.  BELL — Then  I  am  mistaken. 

MR.  CHASE — My  bill  is  not  on  that  subject. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  question  is  on  the 
motion  of  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  to  lay  on  the 
table  the  appeal  taken  by  the  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts  from  the  decision  of  the  Chair. 

MR.  CHASE — I  ask  if  the  motion  of  the  Senator 
from  Louisiana  is  in  order,  when  the  Senator  from 
Massachusetts  retained  the  floor  for  the  purpose  of 
debating  the  appeal  ? 

MR.  BENJAMIN — The  Senator  is  not  in  order  in  re 
newing  that  questi®a,  wkich  has  already  been  decided 
by  the  Chair. 


STRUGGLING    FOR     THE    FLOOR.  253 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — If  the  Chair  acted  under 
an  erroneous  impression  in  supposing  that  debate  on 
the  appeal  was  not  in  order,  when  it  actually  is,  it 
was  the  fault  of  the  Chair,  and  it  would  not  have 
been  in  order  for  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  to 
make  the  motion  which  he  did  make,  while  the 
Senator  from  Massachusetts  was  on  the  floor.  But 
the  Chair  recognized  the  Senator  from  Louisiana, 
supposing  that  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  had 
yielded  the  floor.  The  Senator  had  taken  an  appeal ; 
he  followed  it  up  by  no  address  to  the  Chair,  indicat 
ing  an  intention  that  he  intended  to  debate  the 
appeal,  or  the  Chair  certainly  should  so  far  have 
recognized  him.  But  the  Chair  would  reconsider  his 
ruling  in  that  respect,  with  the  consent  of  the 
Senator  from  Louisiana. 

MR.  BRIGHT  (of  Indiana) — The  chair  will  permi: 
me  to  suggest  that  I  think  the  motion  proper  to  be 
entertained  now  is  the  one  proposed  by  the  Senator 
from  New  Hampshire  [Mr.  Norris].  The  Senator 
from  Massachusetts  presented  his  bill;  the  Senator 
from  New  Hampshire  raised  the  question  as  to 
whether  the  Senate  would  grant  leave  to  introduce 
it;  and  I  think  the  proper  question  to  be  put  now  is, 
Will  the  Senate  grant  leave  to  introduce  a  bill  repeal 
ing  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  ?  The  effect  of  the  mo 
tion  of  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  would  be  to  lay 
the  subject  on  the  table,  from  which  it  might  be 
taken  at  any  time  for  action.  For  one,  I  desire  to 
give  a  decisive  vote  now,  declaring  that  I  am  unwill 
ing  to  legislate  upon  the  subject,  that  I  am  satisfied 
with  the  law  as  it  reads,  and  that  I  will  not  aid  the 
Senator  from  Massachusetts,  or  any  Senator,  in — 


254  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Senator  from  In 
diana  is  certainly  not  in  order. 

MR.  BRIGHT — I  certainly  am  in  order  in  calling  the 
attention  of  the  Chair  to  the  fact  that  the  Senator 
from  New  Hampshire — 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Senator  from  In 
diana  is  not  in  order. 

MR.  BRIGHT — Then  I  will  sit  down  and  ask  the 
Chair  to  state  wherein  I  am  out  of  oider. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — In  discussing  a  ques 
tion  which  is  not  before  the  Senate. 

MR.  BRIGHT. — I  claim  that  the  motion  is  before  the 
Senate.  The  Senator  from  New  Hampshire  raised 
the  question  immediately,  thai  — 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair  decides  other 
wise. 

MR.  BRIGHT — Then  I  appeal  from  the  decision  of 
the  Chair,  and  I  state  this  as  my  point  of  order:  that, 
before  the  bill  was  presented  in  legal  parlance,  the 
Senator  from  New  Hampshire  raised  the  question  as 
to  whether  the  Senate  would  grant  leave,  and  that 
is  the  point  now  before  the  Senate. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair  will  state  the 
question  which  he  supposes  to  be  pending.  The 
Senator  from  California  made  a  point  of  order,  that 
debate  on  the  bill  proposed  to  be  introduced  by  the 
Senator  from  Massachusetts  was  not  in  order.  The 
Chair  so  ruled.  From  that  ruling  the  Senator  from 
Massachusetts  took  an  appeal.  The  Chair  supposed 
that  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  had  yielded  the 
floor,  and  he  gave  the  floor  to  the  Senator  from  Lou 
isiana,  who  moved  to  lay  that  appeal  on  the  table. 
That  is  the  question  which  is  now  pending.  The 


STRUGGLING  FOR  THE  FLOOR.  255 

Chair  before  suggested,  that  if  the  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts  had  not  yielded  the  floor,  he  had  made  a 
mistake  in  giving  the  floor  to  the  Senator  from  Lou 
isiana,  but  he  did  not  suppose  that  the  Senator  from 
Massachusetts,  after  taking  the  appeal,  without  some 
indication  of  his  intention  to  debate  it,  continued 
to  hold  the  floor,  and  he  therefore  recognized  the 
Senator  from  Louisiana.  The  Chair  is  sorry  if  he 
did  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  injustice  in  that 
respect;  but  he  did  not  hear  him,  and  recognized  the 
Senator  from  Louisiana. 

MR.  BRIGHT — I  would  respectfully  ask  the  Chair 
what  has  become  of  the  motion  submitted  by  the 
Senator  from  New  Hampshire? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair  did  not  un 
derstand  him  to  submit  a  motion,  but  the  Senator 
from  California  took  his  point  of  order. 

MR.  BRIGHT — I  wish  to  inquire  of  the  Senator  from 
New  Hampshire  whether  he  has  withdrawn  his  mo 
tion  ? 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — It  was  not  entertained. 
It  is  not  in  his  power  to  say  whether  it  was  with 
drawn  or  not,  for  it  was  not  entertained. 

MR.  NORRIS — I  think  I  can  inform  my  friend  from 
Indiana  how  the  matter  stands.  The  Senator  from 
Massachusetts  proposed  to  introduce  a  bill  on  notice 
given.  I  raised  the  question,  that  it  could  not  be 
introduced  without  leave  of  the  Senate  if  there  was 
objection. 

MR.  SUMNER — Do  I  understand  the  Senator  to  say 
without  notice  given  ?  I  asked  leave  to  introduce 
the  bill  in  pursuance  of  notice. 

MR.  NORRIS — The   Senator    from    Massachusetts,  I 


256  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

have  already  stated,  offered  his  bill  agreeably  to 
previous  notice. 

MR.  SUMNER — Precisely. 

MR.  NORRIS — The  question  was  then  raised,  whether 
it  would  be  received  if  there  was  objection  ?  The 
question  arose,  whether  leave  should  be  granted  to 
the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  to  introduce  the 
bill? 

MR.  SUMNER — That  is  the  first  question. 

MR.  NORRIS — The  Senator  from  Massachusetts, 
upon  the  question  of  granting  leave,  undertook  to 
address  the  Senate.  He  was  then  called  to  order  by 
my  friend  from  California  for  discussing  that  ques 
tion.  The  Chair  sustained  the  objection  of  the  Sen 
ator  from  California.  From  the  decision  of  the  Chair 
the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  took  an  appeal;  and 
that  is  where  the  question  now  stands,  unless  the 
Senator  from  Louisiana  had  a  right  to  make  the 
motion  which  he  did  make,  which  was  to  lay  the 
appeal  on  the  table. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  question  is,  unless 
the  Senator  from  Louisiana  will  disembarrass  the 
Chair  by  withdrawing  it,  on  the  motion  of  the  Sen 
ator  from  Louisiana  to  lay  the  appeal  on  the  table. 

MR.  SUMNER — On  that  motion  I  ask  for  the  yeas 
and  nays. 

The  yeas  and  nays  were  ordered. 

MR.  FOOT  (of  Vermont) — On  what  motion  have  the 
yeas  and  nays  been  ordered. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — On  the  motion  of  the 
Senator  from  Louisiana. 

MR.  WALKER — I  wish  to  know,  before  voting,  what 
will  be  the  effect  of  a  vote  given  in  the  affirmative  on 


STRUGGLING    FOR    THE    FLOOR.  257 

this  motion  ?  Will  it  carry  the  bill  and  the  whole 
subject  on  the  table? 

MR.  FOOT — An  affirmative  carries  the  whole  meas 
ure  on  the  table. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — Yes,  sir;  if  the  motion 
to  lay  on  the  table  be  agreed  to,  it  carries  the  bill 
with  it. 

SEVERAL  SENATORS — No,  no! 

MR.  BENJAMIN — The  question  is,  whether,  on  the 
motion  for  leave  to  introduce  the  bill,  there  shall  be 
debate  ?  The  Chair  has  decided  that  there  shall  be 
no  debate.  Those  who  vote  "yea"  on  my  motion 
to  lay  the  appeal  of  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts 
on  the  table  will  vote  that  there  is  to  be  no  debate 
upon  the  permission  to  offer  the  bill,  and  then  the 
question  will  be  taken  upon  granting  leave. 

MR.  WALKER — The  Chair  decides  differently.  The 
Chair  decides,  if  I  understand,  that  it  will  carry  the 
bill  on  the  table.  Then  how  can  we  ever  reach  the 
question  of  leave,  when  objection  is  made  ? 

MR.  WELLER — I  object  to  this  discussion.  The 
Chair  will  decide  that  question  when  it  arrives.  It 
does  not  arise  now.  I  insist  that  the  Secretary  shall 
go  on  and  call  the  roll. 

MR.  WALKER — Suppose  some  of  us  object  to  it  ? 

MR.  WELLER — Then  I  object  to  your  discussing  it. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Chair,  on  reflection, 
thinks  that  the  motion,  if  agreed  to,  would  not  have 
a  further  effect  than  to  bring  up  the  question  grant 
ing  leave. 

MR.  BRIGHT — I  desire  to  understand  the  Chair.  I 
do  not  wish  to  insist  on  anything  that  is  not  right,  or 
that  is  not  within  the  rules.  That  I  insist  upon  hav- 


258  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

ing.  The  honorable  Senator  from  Louisiana  is  right 
in  his  conclusions  as  to  his  motion,  provided  he  had  a 
right  to  make  the  motion;  but  I  doubt  whether  he 
had  a  right  to  make  that  motion  while  the  motion  of 
the  honorable  Senator  from  New  Hampshire  was 
pending.  I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  consume  the 
time  of  the  Senate.  If  the  effect  of  the  decision  of 
the  Chair  is  to  bring  us  back  to  the  question  as  to 
whether  we  shall  receive  the  bill  or  not,  I  will  yield 
the  floor. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — That  is  it. 

MR.  BRIGHT — Very  well. 

MR.  SUMNER — Before  the  vote  is  taken,  allow  me  to 
read  a  few  words  from  the  Rules  and  Orders,  and 
from  "Jefferson's  Manual." 

"  One  day's  notice,  at  least,  shall  be  given  of  an  in 
tended  motion  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill." 

That  is  the  25th  rule  of  the  Senate  ;  and  then  to 
that  rule,  in  the  publication  which  I  now  hold  in  my 
hand,  is  appended,  from  "Jefferson's  Manual,"  the  fol 
lowing  decisive  language  : 

"When  a  member  desires  to  bring  in  a  bill  on  any 
subject,  he  states  to  the  House,  in  general  terms  the  causes 
for  doing  it,  and  concludes  by  moving  for  leave  to 
bring  in  a  bill  entitled,  etc.  Leave  being  given,  on 
the  question,  a  committee  is  appointed  to  prepare 
and  bring  in  the  bill/' 

Now  I  would  simply  observe,  that  my  purpose  was 
merely  to  make  a  statement — 

MR.  BENJAMIN — I  call  to  order. 

THE  PRESIDING  OFFICER — The  Senator  had  pre 
sented  his  bill,  and  was  debating  it  afterwards.  The 
question  is  on  the  motion  of  the  Senator  from  Louisi- 


STRUGGLING    FOR    THE    FLOOR.  259 

ana  to  lay  the  appeal  on   the  table,  and  on  that  the 
yeas  and  nays  have  been  ordered. 

The  appeal  was  ordered  to  lie  on  the  table  by  a 
vote  of  thirty-five  to  ten.  The  Senate  then  proceeded 
to  record  its  refusal  to  grant  leave  to  introduce  the 
bill,  by  a  like  vote  of  ten  to  thirty-five.  Thus  ended 
this  hour's  struggle  for  the  floor  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Sumner  with  the  slave-power,  which  was  seconded  at 
every  point,  the  reader  doubtless  observed,  by  North 
ern  representatives,  eager  to  do  its  service. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

BLACK    SPIRITS    AND     WHITE. 

QUITE  one  thing  it  was  to  repeal  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  and  quite  another  thing  to  trammel  up  the 
consequences  of  that  Act,  as  the  slave-power  speedily 
had  occasion  to  experience.  As  events  fell  out  after 
ward,  the  victory  of  the  South  proved  worse  than 
defeat,  the  defeat  of  the  North  better  than  victory. 
The  iniquitous  deed  and  the  plot  leading  up  to  its 
consummation,  united  the  slave  States— obliterated 
their  party  lines.  Southern  Whigs  vied  with  South 
ern  Democrats  in  devotion  to  their  section  during  the 
long  struggle  which  ended  in  the  Act  of  Abrogation. 
Northern  Whigs,  true  to  the  interests  of  theirsection, 
learnt,  in  the  desertion  of  their  Southern  brethren  in 
that  crisis,  the  grand  lesson  that  the  slave-power,  in 
its  contest  for  supremacy  in  the  Union,  knew  no  party, 
forgot  all  differences  to  attain  its  end. 

This  discovery  broke  the  Whig  party,  and  threw 
upon  the  national  horizon  the  gigantic  body  of  a 
Northern  political  organization,  devoted  not  to  the 
emancipation  of  slavery  but  to  the  emancipation  of  the 
nation  from  the  domination  of  the  slave-power.  What 
land  slavery  had  actually  got,  that  it  might  keep,  but 
not  another  inch  of  the  soil  of  the  Republic  should  it 
occupy.  The  hour  which  recorded  the  passage  of 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  261 

the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  recorded  also  this  deter 
mined  purpose  on  the  part  of  the  free  States. 

The  two  contrary  ideas  of  freedom  and  slavery  had 
thus  entered  a  fresh,  and,  perhaps,  final  stage  of  coun 
ter  expansion  and  conflict.  The  situation,  in  these 
circumstances,  was  resolved  into  a  gladiatorial  trial  of 
strength  and  dexterity  in  the  use  of  means,  on  the 
part  of  the  wrestlers.  Sheer  strength  was  plainly 
with  the  North,  while  political  dexterity  was  as  plainly 
with  the  South.  Could  the  Northern  giant  pin  its 
agile  Southern  adversary  to  the  ground  and  hold  him 
there,  was  the  momentous  question  which  freedom  had 
now  to  answer. 

For  the  first  time  the  Northern  giant  fully  compre 
hended  that  the  struggle  was  a  life  and  death  one, 
and  that  to  prevail  he  needed  the  disciplined  strength 
of  a  powerful  party  in  his  right  hand.  The  Whig 
party  went  to  pieces  in  the  storm  of  passion  which 
swept  through  the  free  States  in  the  wake  of  the  Act 
of  Repeal.  There  was  a  moment  in  the  swift  current 
of  events  when  men  attempted  to  reunite  its  North 
ern  and  Southern  wings  in  a  new  organization.  But 
the  explosive  forces  which  had  wrecked  the  Whig 
party  made  quick  work  of  the  American.  Vain  was 
every  effort  to  find  common  ground  for  the  feet  of  its 
Northern  and  Southern  sides.  In  that  storm  and  stress 
period  there  was  none. 

Meanwhile  the  excitement,  produced  by  the  over 
throw  of  the  slave  line  of  1820,  advanced  apace 
through  the  free  States.  The  popular  uprising  was 
assuming  everywhere  the  volume  and  force  of  a 
political  inundation.  Spontaneously,  irresistibly, 
at  widely  separated  points,  organized  move- 


262  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ments  started  up  in  opposition  to  the  extension  of 
slavery  to  the  free  soil  of  the  nation.  Anti-slavery 
Whigs,  anti-slavery  Democrats,  anti-slavery  Amer 
icans,  old-time  Abolitionists,  and  the  membership  of 
the  then  existing  Free  Soil  party,  were  dissolving 
under  the  fervent  heat  of  the  crisis  and  pouring 
together  into  the  new  Northern  party.  The  rapid 
rise  of  the  Republican  party  is  proof  positive,  that 
the  North  had  learnt  of  the  South,  at  last,  to  erect 
the  slavery  question  into  a  paramount  national 
issue. 

The  movement  for  the  formation  of  a  new  party 
extended,  during  the  year  of  1854,  to  Wisconsin, 
Michigan,  Ohio,  Indiana,  New  York,  and  to  several 
of  the  New  England  States,  like  Vermont  and  Mas 
sachusetts.  As  early  as  July,  the  Free  Soil  party  in 
the  latter  State  assumed  the  name  of  "  Republican." 
At  its  annual  State  Convention  appointed  to  meet 
in  Worcester,  September  yth,  the  managers  deter 
mined  to  play  their  best  card,  speaking  politically. 
And  this  card,  it  was  generally  agreed,  was  the  pres 
ence  of  Mr.  Sumner,  and  an  address  from  him 
before  the  Convention.  Notwithstanding  the  wide 
spread  confusion,  and  even  chaos,  into  which  the  two 
old  parties  were  tumbling  in  Massachusetts  on  the 
subject  of  slavery  extension,  there  was  just  enough 
survival  of  the  traditions  of  each  to  prevent  a  fusion 
of  the  anti-slavery  elements  of  both  in  a  common 
movement  against  the  common  enemy.  The  increas 
ing  popularity  of  Sumner  among  all  classes  of  the 
State,  without  regard  to  party,  was  an  important 
influence,  which,  at  the  moment,  was  strongly  mak 
ing  for  union  of  the  anti-slavery  Whigs  and  demo- 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  263 

crats  of  the  commonwealth,  with  the  Free  Soil 
organization,  in  the  formation  of  the  new  party. 

Sumner,  by  his  splendid  fight  in  Washington  for 
freedom,  had,  in  fine,  become  in  Massachusetts  a 
moral  magnet,  a  political  point  of  union  in  the  midst 
of  the  flooding  and  confusion  of  the  converging 
currents  of  a  swiftly  changing  public  opinion.  John 
A.  Andrew,  Chairman  of  the  Republican  Provisional 
Committee  of  the  State,  wrote  him  in  regard  to  the 
then  approaching  convention  :  "  But  more  depends 
upon  the  aid  you  can  give  than  upon  that  of  any  one 
man.  Your  recent  battles  of  the  Senate  have  shut 
the  mouth  of  personal  opposition,  wrung  applause 
from  the  unwilling,  excited  a  State's  pride  and 
gratitude,  such  as  rarely  it  is  the  fortune  of  any  one 
to  win.  Your  presence  at  the  nominating  convention 
.  .  .  is  a  point  which  must  be  agreed  to  at  once." 
And  later  "  we  can  do  nothing  which  will 

so  completely  secure  a  triumphant  gathering  as  to 
announce  your  name." 

To  this  Macedonian  appeal  of  the  future  war 
governor,  Sumner,  beset  as  he  was  by  cares  and 
labors  at  Washington,  could  not  turn  a  deaf  ear,  but 
hearkened  to  the  voice  of  his  friend,  and  went  to  the 
aid  o€  the  new  party  in  an  address  of  characteristic 
power  and  eloquence.  The  burden  of  it,  as  of  all  his 
public  utterances  now,  was  Cathago  est  delenda.  The 
slave-power  must  and  shall  be  destroyed,  broken 
utterly  on  the  broad  field  of  national  politics,  broken 
utterly  within  the  narrower  limits  of  the  several  free 
States  in  general,  and  of  Massachusetts  in  particular. 
Opposition  to  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill,  opposition  to 
the  admission  of  new  slave  States,  whether  from 


264  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Texas  or  Cuba,  Utah  or  New  Mexico,  was  the  duty 
of  the  hour.  Duty,  right,  justice,  liberty,  humanity, 
were  the  commanding  entities  with  which  he  dealt  as 
a  public  man.  And  all  of  these,  separately  or  to 
gether,  were  thundering  through  him  for  the  total 
annihilation  of  the  slave-power.  They  thundered 
through  him  on  this  occasion. 

His  plan  for  the  performance  of  the  duties,  which 
the  crisis  imposed  upon  the  friends  of  freedom,  was 
simple  but  effective.  "The  most  obvious  way,"  he 
expressed  it,  "  is  by  choosing  men  to  represent  us  in 
the  National  Government  who  will  not  shrink 
from  the  conflict  with  slavery,  and  also  other 
men  at  home  who  will  not  shrink  from  the  same  con 
flict  with  slave-hunters."  In  this  choice  of  men  he 
apprehended  correctly,  lay  the  necessity  for  the  new 
party.  Loyal  men  must  be  reinforced  by  legal  safe 
guards  for  the  protection  of  the  liberty  of  all  who 
tread  the  soil  of  Massachusetts,  and  these  must  be 
vigorously  enforced. 

"  Massachusetts  would  do  well,"  he  urged,  "  to  imi 
tate  Vermont,  which  by  special  law  places  the  fugi 
tive  slave  under  the  safeguard  of  Trial  by  Jury  and 
the  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus.1" 

"  A  simple  prohibition,  declaring  that  no  person 
holding  the  commission  of  Massachusetts  as  justice 
of  the  peace  or  other  magistrate  shall  assume  to  act 
as  a  slave-hunting  commissioner,  or  counsel  of  any 
slave-hunter  under  some  proper  penalty,"  he  thought, 
"  would  go  far  to  render  the  existing  Slave  Act  in 
operative."  This  radical  idea  was  subsequently  em 
bodied  in  the  Massachusetts  Personal  Liberty  Law, 
enacted  by  the  Know-Nothing  Legislature  of  1855, 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  265 

which,  also,  incorporated  the  principle  of  equality 
before  the  law,  announced  several  years  before  by 
Sumner,  in  a  bill  abolishing  all  discrimination  on  ac 
count  of  race  or  color  in  the  public  schools  of  the 
commonwealth. 

11  We,  too"  Sumner  pleaded  with  the  friends  of  free 
dom,  in  his  address  on  "  The  Anti-Slavery  Enterprise: 
Its  Necessity,  Practicability,  and  Dignity,"  delivered 
in  Boston,  New-York,  Brooklyn,  and  Auburn  to  large 
and  appreciative  audiences  during  the  year  1855; 
"  We,  too,  must  be  united.  Among  us  at  last  mutual 
criticism,  crimination,  and  feud  must  give  place  to 
mutual  sympathy,  trust,  and  alliance.  Face  to  face 
against  the  Slave  Oligarchy  must  be  rallied  the 
UNITED  MASSES  of  the  North,  in  compact  politi 
cal  association — planted  on  the  everlasting  base  of 
justice — knit  together  by  instincts  of  a  common  dan 
ger  and  holy  sympathies  of  humanity — enkindled  by 
love  of  Freedom,  not  only  for  themselves,  but  for 
others — determined  to  enfranchise  the  National  Gov 
ernment  from  degrading  thraldom — and  constituting 
the  BACKBONE  PARTY,  powerful  in  numbers, 
wealth,  and  intelligence,  but  more  powerful  still  in  an 
inspiring  cause.  Let  this  be  done,  and  victory  will 
be  ours." 

"Though  the  Republican  party,"  says  "  Wilson's 
Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave-Power  in  America,"  "  was 
not  immediately  organized  in  the  free  States,  its 
spirit  inspired  and  its  ideas  largely  pervaded  the 
North.  Within  one  year  eleven  Republican  Senators 
were  elected  and  fifteen  States  had  secured  anti- 
Nebraska  majorities.  Out  of  one  hundred  and  forty- 
two  Northern  members  of  the  House,  one  hundred 


266  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

and  twenty  were  opposed  to  the  iniquitous  measure. 
They  were  in  sufficient  numbers  not  only  to  control 
the  election  of  Speaker,  but  they  were  able,  by  a 
majority  of  fifteen,  to  declare  that,  '  in  the  opinion  of 
this  House,  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  of 
1820,  prohibiting  slavery  north  of  36°  30',  was  an  ex 
ample  of  useless  and  factious  agitation  of  the  slavery 
question,  unwise  and  unjust  to  the  American 
people.'  " 

Meanwhile,  fast  thickening  was  the  plot  of  the  na 
tional  tragedy.  As  soon  as  the  Government  had 
adopted  the  "  squatter  sovereignty  "  scheme  of  Doug 
las  in  settling  the  territorial  question,  the  two  sec 
tions  precipitated  their  forces  upon  the  debatable 
land,  and  closed  in  a  death-struggle  for  its  posses 
sion.  For  the  first  time  the  antagonistic  social  sys 
tems  of  the  Union  came  into  physical  collision. 
Showers  of  bullets  and  blood  dashed  from  the  dark 
ening  skies  above  Kansas.  Civil  war  between  the 
North  and  the  South  had  actually  begun. 

According  to  the  new  dogma,  the  Territories  were 
to  belong  to  that  section  which  should  succeed  in 
making  the  greatest  show  of  heads.  The  fate  of 
slavery,  /.  e.,  whether  it  should  be  "  voted  up  or 
voted  down,"  was  committed,  by  the  authors  of  the 
abrogation  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  to  the  arbit 
rament  of  the  ballot.  In  the  trial  of  strength,  in  this 
regard,  which  followed,  the  decided  superiority  of 
the  free  States  was  demonstrated.  Their  superior 
colonizing  resources  gave  them,  at  once,  an  immense 
advantage  in  the  contest  for  possession.  Certainly 
Kansas  could  not  be  captured  for  Slavery  by  numeri- 
gal  strength. 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  267 

Worsted  as  it  clearly  was  in  a  count  of  polls,  the 
South  straightway  threw  itself  back  upon  fraud  and 
force  as  allies  in  the  struggle  with  its  powerful  free 
rival.  The  cartridge-box  was  at  every  election  in  the 
territory  substituted  for  the  ballot-box  by  bands  of 
border  ruffians  from  Missouri,  under  the  leadership 
of  a  United  States  Senator.  The  history  of  Kansas, 
during  this  period,  is  a  history  of  anarchy  and  terror. 
Monstrous  frauds  waltzed  back  and  forth  with  mon 
strous  crimes  against  freedom.  Popular  sov 
ereignty,  private  rights,  public  order,  were  all  out 
raged  by  the  instruments  of  the  slave-power,  from 
the  chief  magistrate  of  the  nation  to  the  lawless 
Missouri  raiders. 

This  bloody  duel  between  freedom  and  slavery 
agitated  the  North  to  depths  not  stirred  before.  It 
riveted  the  attention  of  Congress  and  President.  The 
smell  of  powder  from  that  far-off  battle-field  was  to 
the  country  what  the  smell  of  meat  is  to  a  cage  of 
wild  beasts.  The  counter-currents  of  the  storm  with 
its  double  electric  centres,  accumulated  and  escaped 
chaotically  as  lions  enraged  roar  and  plunge  against 
prison  bars.  The  secondary  centre  of  the  disturb 
ance  was  above  Kansas,  the  primary  over  the  seat  of 
Government  at  Washington.  From  storm-centre  to 
storm-centre  the  "  live  thunder  "  leaped,  when  Kansas 
began  its  opposite  and  discordant  raps  upon  the  door 
of  Congress  for  admission  into  the  Union. 

At  this  juncture,  Sumner  delivered  in  the  Senate, 
during  two  days,  May  i9th  and  2oth,  1856,  a  philippic 
of  extraordinary  range  and  power  against  the  op 
pressors  of  a  free,  suffering,  and  heroic  people.  His 
"  Crime  Against  Kansas"  was  another  speech  crisis- 


268  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

born.  It  was  an  explosive  outbreak  of  the  forces  of 
a  long-gathering  tempest,  its  terrific  lightning-flash 
and  stroke,  the  sulphurous  throat  and  vent  of  the 
hot,  surcharged  heart  of  the  North. 

Contemporary  accounts  agree  that  the  great  orator 
was  at  his  best  during  those  two  May  days.  The  un 
measured  contumely  and  insolence  of  the  represen 
tatives  of  the  slave-power,  had  aroused  him  to  such 
militancy  and  fire  of  manner,  argument,  rejoinder, 
and  invective,  as  he  had  not  before  displayed  on  the 
floor  of  the  Senate.  For  two  months  Kansas  had 
been  the  subject  of  debate  in  that  body.  And  for 
two  months  he  had  listened  to  the  stream  of  South 
ern  insult  and  denunciation,  poured  upon  himself 
and  associates,  and  upon  the  friends  of  freedom  at 
the  North  and  in  Kansas. 

Contemporary  accounts  agree  also  that  the  audi 
ence  was  in  keeping  with  the  character  of  the  occa 
sion  and  the  fame  of  the  orator.  With  one  or  two 
exceptions  the  members  of  the  Senate  were  in  their 
seats,  and  the  lobbies  crowded  with  powerful  poli 
ticians,  such  as  Robert  J.  Walker,  Francis  P.  Blair, 
and  Thurlow  Weed.  Among  these  were  visible  many 
of  the  leading  spirits  of  the  House.  The  ladies'  gal 
lery  could  not  contain  the  fair  ones,  who  overflowed 
into  the  anteroom  of  the  Senate  Chamber.  There, 
within  his  eye,  the  orator  had  his  assailants.  The  fell 
and  determined  face  of  Douglas  watched  him  with 
ill-concealed  hate  and  rage  from  the  floor  while  he 
spoke.  And  there  darkening,  hard-by,  with  violent 
and  malignant  passions,  was  the  haughty  and  bitter 
countenance  of  his  old  enemy,  James  M.  Mason. 
The  peevish  and  supercilious  visage  of  his  other  old 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  269 

enemy,  A.  P.  Butler,  of  South  Carolina,  crowned 
with  silver  locks,  was,  however,  missing  from  the 
concourse  of  hostile  faces  which  confronted  Sumner 
during  these  two  days  on  which  he  held  the  atten 
tion  of  the  Senate,  the  lobbies,  and  the  galleries. 
The  Senator  from  South  Carolina,  having  shot  his 
quiver  of  shafts  during  the  debate,  had  left  for  his 
Southern  home,  little  dreaming,  doubtless,  of  the  dis 
comfiture  which  was  to  overtake  him  from  the  strong 
arm  and  long  bow  of  the  Northern  giant. 

Expectation  looked  that  first  day  from  the  eyes  of 
friends  and  foes  alike  And  from  the  opening  and 
solemn  sentences  of  the  famous  speech,  beginning, 
"Mk.  PRESIDENT,  you  are  now  called  to  redress  a 
great  wrong.  Seldom  in  the  history  of  nations  is 
such  a  question  presented.  Tariff,  army  bills,  navy 
bills,  land  bills,  are  important,  and  justly  occupy 
your  care;  but  these  all  belong  to  the  courses  of 
ordinary  legislation,"  etc.,  to  the  impassioned  and 
imposing  peroration,  closing:  "  In  just  regard  for 
free-labor  which  you  would  blast  by  deadly  contact 
with  slave-labor — in  Christian  sympathy  with  the 
slave,  whom  you  would  task  and  sell — in  stern  con 
demnation  of  the  crime  consummated  on  that  beau 
tiful  soil — in  rescue  of  fellow-citizens,  now  subjugated 
to  tyrannical  usurpation — in  dutiful  respect  for  the 
early  fathers,  whose  aspirations  are  ignobly  thwarted 
— in  the  name  of  the  Constitution  outraged,  of  the 
laws  trampled  down,  of  justice  banished,  of  humanity 
degraded,  of  peace  destroyed,  of  freedom  crushed  to 
earth — and  in  the  name  of  the  Heavenly  Father, 
whose  service  is  perfect  freedom,  I  make  this  last  ap 
peal."  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  expecta- 


27°  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tions  excited  by  the  orator  and  the  occasion  were 
fully  realized,  and,  indeed,  surpassed  by  the  force 
and  grandeur  of  the  performance. 

There  are  passages  that  make  one  think  of  Burke, 
and  of  those  unequaled  descriptions  of  his,  in  the 
Impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings,  of  the  sufferings  of 
India.  Here  is  one.  Sumner  has  been  commentinp- 

O 

upon  the  character  of  the  people  of  bleeding  Kansas, 
as  peaceful  tillers  of  the  soil,  and  continues  thus: 
"  Such  are  the  people  of  Kansas,  whose  security  has 
been  overthrown.  Scenes  from  which  civilization 
averts  her  countenance  are  part  of  their  daily  life. 
Border  incursions,  which  in  barbarous  lands  fretted 
and  harried  an  exposed  people,  are  here  renewed, 
with  this  peculiarity,  that  our  border  robbers  do  not 
simply  levy  blackmail  and  drive  off  a  few  cattle,  like 
those  who  acted  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Doug 
las  of  other  days,  they  do  not  seize  a  few  persons  and 
sweep  them  away  into  captivity,  like  the  African 
slave-traders,  whom  we  brand  as  pirates,  but  they 
commit  a  succession  of  deeds  in  which  border  sorrows 
and  African  wrongs  are  revived  together  on  American 
soil,  while,  for  the  time  being,  all  protection  is  an 
nulled,  and  the  whole  Territory  is  enslaved. 

"  Private  griefs  mingle  their  poignancy  with  public 
wrongs.  I  do  not  dwell  on  the  anxieties  of  families 
exposed  to  sudden  assault,  and  lying  down  to  rest 
with  the  alarms  of  war  ringing  in  the  ears,  not  know 
ing  that  another  day  may  be  spared  to  them.  Through 
out  this  bitter  winter,  with  the  thermometer  at  thirty 
degrees  below  zero,  the  citizens  of  Lawrence  were 
constrained  to  sleep  under  arms,  with  sentinels  pacing 
constant  watch  against  surprise.  Our  souls  are  wrung 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  271 

by  individual  instances.  In  vain  do  we  condemn 
the  cruelties  of  another  age,  the  refinements  of  tor 
ture  to  which  men  were  doomed,  the  rack  and  thumb 
screw  of  the  Inquisition,  the  last  agonies  of  the  regi 
cide  Ravaillac. 

"  '  Luke's  iron  crown,  and  Damien's  bed  of  steel ; ' 

for  kindred  outrages  disgrace  these  borders.  Mur 
der  stalks,  assassination  skulks  in  the  tall  grass  of  the 
prairie,  and  the  vindictiveness  of  man  assumes  un 
wonted  forms.  A  preacher  of  the  Gospel  has  been 
ridden  on  a  rail,  then  thrown  into  the  Missouri,  fast 
ened  to  a  log,  and  left  to  drift  down  its  muddy, 
tortuous  current.  And  lately  we  have  the  tidings  of 
that  enormity  without  precedent,  a  deed  without  a 
name,  where  a  candidate  for  the  legislature  was  most 
brutally  gashed  with  knives  and  hatchets,  and  then, 
after  weltering  in  blood  on  the  snow-clad  earth,  trun 
dled  along,  with  gaping  wounds,  to  fall  dead  before 
the  face  of  his  wife." 

More  than  one  slave  champion,  during  these  two 
days,  encountered  the  shock  of  Sumner's  powerful 
lance,  recoiled  from  the  mastiff-like  glare  and  spring 
of  invective  and  rejoinder.  Two  Senators,  in  partic 
ular,  suffered  severely  in  this  regard.  They  were 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  and  Arthur  P.  Butler,  whom 
Sumner  dubbed,  respectively,  the  Don  Quixote  and  the 
Sancho  Panza  of  slavery.  The  physical  dissimilitude 
of  the  Senatorial  pair,  and  resemblance  to  the  famous 
knight  and  squire  of  Cervantes,  rendered  the  charac 
terization  a  palpable  parliamentary  hit.  Sumner's 
punishment  of  these  gentlemen  was  merciless,  terrible, 
but,  all  the  same,  it  was,  to  the  last  degree,  deserved. 


272  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

The  Defender  of  Humanity  got  no  quarter,  and  gave 
none. 

"  The  Senator  copies  the  British  officer,"  the  speaker 
is  now  bringing  the  Northern  hammer  crashing  upon 
the  helmet  of  the  "  Little  giant."  "  The  Senator  copies 
the  British  officer  who,  with  boastful  swagger,  said  that 
with  the  end  of  his  sword  he  would  cram  the  'stamps' 
down  the  throats  of  the  American  people;  and  he  will 
meet  a  similar  failure.  He  may  convulse  this  country 
with  civil  feud.  Like  the  ancient  madman,  he  may 
set  fire  to  this  temple  of  Constitutional  Liberty, 
grander  than  Ephesian  Dome  ;  but  he  cannot  enforce 
obedience  to  that  tyrannical  usurpation. 

"  The  Senator  dreams  that  he  can  subdue  the  North. 
He  disclaims  the  open  threat,  but  his  conduct  implies 
it.  How  little  that  Senator  knows  himself,  or  the 
cause  which  he  persecutes.  .  .  .  Against  him  are 
stronger  battalions  than  any  marshaled  by  mortal 
arm,  the  inborn,  ineradicable,  invincible  sentiments  of 
the  human  heart;  against  him  is  nature  with  all  her 
subtile  forces  ;  against  him  is  God.  Let  him  try  to 
subdue  these." 

Here  is  a  specimen  of  the  way  in  which  the  Don 
Quixote  of  slavery  was  handled:  "With  regret  I 
come  again  upon  the  Senator  from  South  Carolina 
(Mr.  Butler),  who,  omnipresent  in  this  debate,  over 
flows  with  rage  at  the  simple  suggestion  that  Kansas 
has  applied  for  admission  as  a  free  State,  and  with 
incoherent  phrase,  discharges  the  loose  expectoration 
of  his  speech,  now  upon  her  representatives,  and  then 
upon  her  people.  There  was  no  extravagance  of  the 
ancient  parliamentary  debate  which  he  did  not  repeat, 
nor  was  there  any  possible  deviation  from  truth  which 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  273 

lie  did  not  make,  with  so  much  of  passion,  I  glad-ly 
add,  as  to  save  him  from  the  suspicion  of  intentional 
aberration.  But  the  Senator  touches  nothing  which  he 
does  not  disfigure  with  error,  sometimes  of  principle, 
sometimes  of  fact.  He  shows  an  incapacity  of  accu 
racy,  whether  in  stating  the  Constitution  or  in  stating 
the  law,  whether  in  details  of  statistics  or  diversions 
of  scholarship.  He  cannot  ope  his  mouth,  but  out 
there  flies  a  blunder."  .  .  . 

By  the  time  that  the  great  speech  was  ended,  the 
representatives  of  the  slave-power  were  overflow 
ing  with  rage  and  vindictiveness,  bordering  closely 
on  open  violence.  Douglas,  in  particular,  signalized 
himself  by  the  fury  and  ferocity  with  which  he  threw 
himself  upon  speech  and  speaker.  Nothing,  if  not 
savage  and  audacious  in  debate,  Doughs  was 
certainly  savage  and  audacious  enough  then.  Beside 
himself,  he  foamed  with  choler  and  vituperation. 
Once  during  the  turbid  stream  of  personalities, 
emitted  by  him,  he  exclaimed,  "  Is  it  his  object  to 
provoke  some  of  us  to  kick  him  as  we  would  a  dog 
in  the  street,  that  he  may  get  sympathy  upon  the 
just  chastisement  ?  "  No  doubt  now  that  the  North 
ern  Hammer  in  the  hands  of  the  Northern  giant  had 
inflicted  serious  execution  upon  the  forces  of  slavery. 
It  had  struck  home  among  them,  which  the  frenzied 
outcries  and  execrations  of  the  wounded  fully 
attested. 

James  M.  Mason  followed  in  a  personal  assault 
which  showed  how  deep  a  wound  he  received  at  the 
hand  of  Sumner  two  years  before,  and  how  freshly  it 
still  rankled.  "  I  have  said  that  the  necessity  of 
political  position,"  stormed  Mr.  Mason,  "  alone  brings 
18 


274  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

me  into  relations  with  men  upon  this  floor  who  else 
where  I  cannot  acknowledge  as  possessing  manhood 
in  any  form.  I  am  constrained  to  hear  here  deprav 
ity,  vice  in  its  most  odious  form  uncoiled  in  this 
presence,  exhibiting  its  loathsome  deformities  in 
accusation  and  vilification  against  the  quarter  of  the 
country  from  which  I  come  ;  and  I  must  listen  to  it 
because  it  is  a  necessity  of  my  position,  under  a 
common  Government,  to  recognize  as  an  equal  polit 
ically  one  whom  to  see  elsewhere  is  to  shun  and 
despise." 

But  Sumner  was  not  yet  done  with  these  gentle 
men.  And  so  when  the  tempest  in  the  Senate  had 
somewhat  abated,  he  arose  and  seizing  the  great 
Northern  Hammer  threw  himself  upon  Douglas  and 
Mason  in  a  fierce  and  final  rejoinder,  which  must 
have  left  no  doubt  in  the  minds  of  his  assailants, 
that  if  they  were  disposed  to  continue  their  assault 
upon  him,  he  was  likewise  ready  to  receive  them,  to 
return  them  blow  for  blow. 

To  Douglas  Sumner  addressed  himself  thus  :  "  To 
the  Senator  from  Illinois  I  shall  willingly  yield  the 
privilege  of  the  common  scold — the  last  word  ;  but  I 
kwill  not  yield  to  him,  in  any  discussion  with  me,  the 
last  argument,  or  the  last  semblance  of  it.  He  has 
crowned  the  outrage  of  this  debate  by  venturing  to 
rise  here  and  calumniate  me.  He  has  said  that  I 
came  here,  took  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitution, 
and  yet  determined  not  to  support  a  particular  clause 
in  that  Constitution.  To  that  statement  I  give,  to 
his  face,  the  flattest  denial.  When  it  was  made 
previously  on  this  floor  by  the  absent  Senator  from 
South  Carolina  [Mr.  Butler],  I  then  repelled  it  ; 


BLACK    SPIRITS   AND    WHITE.  275 

you  shall  see  how  explicitly  and  completely."  Here 
Mr.  Sumner  paused  to  read  extracts  from  his  speech 
made  June  28,  1854,  in  proof  of  his  allegation,  and 
then  went  on  :  "  Yes,  in  face  of  all  this,  which 
occurred  in  open  debate  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate, 
which  is  here  in  the  records  of  the  country,  and  has 
been  extensively  circulated,  quoted,  discussed,  criti 
cised,  the  Senator  from  Illinois,  in  the  swiftness  of 
his  audacity,  presumes  to  assail  me.  Perhaps  I  had 
better  leave  that  Senator  without  a  word  more  ;  but 
this  is  not  the  first,  or  the  second,  or  the  third,  or  the 
fourth  time  that  he  has  launched  against  me  his 
personalities.  Sir,  if  this  be  agreeable  to  him,  I 
make  no  complaint,  though  for  the  sake  of  truth 
and  the  amenities  of  debate,  I  would  wish  that  he 
had  directed  his  assaults  upon  my  arguments  ;  but 
since  he  has  presumed  to  touch  me,  he  will  not  com 
plain,  if  I  administer  to  him  a  word  of  advice. 

"Sir,  this  is  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  an 
important  body  under  the  Constitution,  with  great 
powers.  Its  members  are  justly  supposed  from 
years  to  be  above  the  intemperance  of  youth,  and 
from  character  to  be  above  the  gusts  of  vulgarity. 
They  are  supposed  to  have  something  of  wisdom,  and 
something  of  that  candor  which  is  the  handmaid  of 
wisdom.  Let  the  Senator  bear  these  things  in  mind, 
and  remember  hereafter  that  the  bowie-knife  and 
bludgeon  are  not  proper  emblems  of  senatorial  debate. 
Let  him  remember  that  the  swagger  of  Bob  Acres 
and  the  ferocity  of  the  Malay  cannot  add  dignity  to 
this  body.  ...  I  will  not  descend  to  things 
which  dropped  so  naturally  from  his  tongue.  I  only 
brand  them  to  his  face  as  false.  I  say  also  to  that 


276  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Senator,  and  I  wish  him  to  bear  it  in  mind,  that  no 
person  with  the  upright  form  of  man  can  be  allowed 
[He  sit  a  tioti\ . 

MR.  DOUGLAS — Say  it. 

MR.  SUMNER — I  will  say  it — no  person  with  the 
upright  form  of  man  can  be  allowed,  without  violation 
of  all  decency,  to  switch  out  from  his  tongue  the  per 
petual  stench  of  offensive  personality.  Sir,  this  is 
not  a  proper  weapon  of  debate,  at  least  on  this  floor. 
The  noisome,  squat,  and  nameless  animal  to  which  I 
now  refer  is  not  the  proper  model  for  an  American 
Senator.  Will  the  Senator  from  Illinois  take  notice  ? 

MR.  DOUGLAS — I  will, — and  therefore  will  not  imi 
tate  you,  Sir. 

MR.  SUMNER — I  did  not  hear  the  Senator. 

MR.  DOUGLAS — I  said,  if  that  be  the  case,  I  would 
certainly  never  imitate  you  in  that  capacity — recog 
nizing  the  force  of  the  illustration. 

MR.  SUMNER — Mr.  President,  again  the  Senator 
switches  his  tongue,  and  again  he  fills  the  Senate  with 
its  offensive  odor.  But  I  drop  the  Senator." 

Having  settled  his  account  with  Douglas,  Mr.  Sum- 
ner  turned  and  fired  this  parting  shot  at  Mason  : 
"  There  was  still  another,  the  Senator  from  Virginia, 
who  is  now  also  in  my  eye.  That  Senator  said  noth 
ing  of  argument,  and  therefore  there  is  nothing  of 
that  to  be  answered.  I  simply  say  to  him  that  hard 
words  are  not  arguments,  frowns  are  not  reasons,  nor 
do  scowls  belong  to  the  proper  arsenal  of  parlimentary 
debate.  The  Senator  has  not  forgotten  that  on  a 
former  occasion  I  did  something  to  exhibit  the  plan 
tation  manners  which  he  displays.  I  will  not  do  any 
more  now." 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WblTE.  277 

When  Sumner  had  finished  his  speech  and  assail 
ants,  John  A.  Bingham,  a  member  of  the  House  from 
Ohio,  who  had  come  over  to  the  Senate  to  listen  to 
the  great  philippic,  and  who  was  an  eye  and  ear  wit 
ness  of  the  scenes  in  the  Senate  Chamber  which  fol 
lowed  its  delivery,  became  convinced  that  Sumner 
was  in  danger  of  personal  violence  upon  the  adjourn 
ment  of  that  body.  This  apprehension  he  communi 
cated  to  Mr.  Sumner's  colleague,  Henry  Wilson,  who 
was  so  much  struck  with  the  force  of  it  that  he  lost 
no  time  in  communicating  it  in  turn  to  his  friend. 
"  I  am  going  home  with  you  to-day,"  said  he  to  Sum 
ner;  "  several  of  us  are  going  home  with  you."  To 
which  his  friend  made  short  answer,  "  None  of  that, 
Wilson." 

If  Sumner  was  absolutely  fearless  in  debate,  he  was 
absolutely  fearless  in  other  respects  also.  And  so 
instead  of  allowing  Wilson  and  other  friends  to 
accompany  him  home  that  day,  he  eluded  their  pru 
dence  by  shooting  off  as  on  other  days  without  them. 
Not  thinking  that  the  object  of  their  anxious  care  had 
already  left  the  Capitol,  Henry  Wilson,  Anson  Bur- 
lingame,  and  Schuyler  Colfax  waited  for  him  on  the 
floor  of  the  Senate,  but  perceiving  after  a  while  that  he 
was  not  visible,  they,  too,  left  the  Capitol,  but  stopped 
for  some  time  at  the  porter's  lodge  until  they  learned 
that  he  had  gone  home.  Meanwhile,  Sumner,  going 
his  wonted  gait  along  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  over 
took  William  H.  Seward  with  whom  he  had  an 
engagement  to  dine  that  day.  Together  the  two 
statesmen  walked  on  as  far  as  the  omnibuses,  when 
Mr.  Seward  proposed  that  they  take  one  of  these 
vehicles.  But  Sumner  who  had  an  errand  to  the 


278  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Government  printing-office  to  look  over  proofs,  pos 
sibly  of  the  speech  he  had  just  delivered,  excused 
himself  and  pursued  his  walk  alone,  without  encoun 
tering  any  one  to  disturb  the  even  tenor  of  his  way. 

The  next  day  the  calm  continued.  The  hate  was 
there,  the  vindictive  disposition  was  there.  The  sul 
try  atmosphere  hung  heavy  with  passion  over  the 
Capitol,  but  so  it  had  for  months  before.  The  twenty- 
first  day  of  May  was  not  different  from  a  hundred 
other  days  which  had  preceded  it.  And  so  it  rose 
and  died  like  them,  without  the  happening  of  any 
thing  out  of  the  ordinary  course  of  events.  But  it 
was  the  eve  of  a  startling  act,  dark  and  notable  in  the 
annals  of  political  crimes  in  America. 

When  the  Senate  convened  on  the  twenty-second, 
Mr.  Sumner  was  in  his  place,  and  wholly  unconscious 
of  the  dreadful  scene  which  was  then  shortly  to  be 
enacted  in  that  chamber  about  his  person,  of  the  cloud 
of  malignant  passion  which  was  impending  low  above 
him,  and  was  soon  to  burst  in  fury  on  his  head.  The 
session  of  the  Senate  was  brief,  owing  to  the  death  of 
a  member  of  the  House  from  Missouri.  After  listen 
ing  to  a  tribute  of  respect  to  the  dead  legislator,  the 
Senate,  according  to  custom,  immediately  adjourned. 
The  knock  of  death  at  the  door  of  either  branch  of 
the  National  Legislature  hushes  for  that  day  the 
wants  and  the  voices  of  the  living  within  them.  The 
halls  become  deserted  and  silent,  gloomily  in  keeping 
with  the  tenement  of  clay  vacated  and  the  everlasting 
quiet  of  the  grave  settling  about  one,  whom  those 
scenes  and  seats  of  earthly  power  are  to  know  no 
more  forever. 

On  this  particular  occasion  the  Senators,  or  at  least 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  279 

the  most  of  them,  upon  the  adjournment  of  the  Senate, 
presently  dispersed  and  went  their  several  ways,  leav 
ing  the  chamber  and  the  anteroom  to  a  few  of  their 
number,  among  whom  was  Mr.  Sumner.  There  lin 
gered,  besides,  one  or  two  members  from  the  House 
and  sundry  visitors,  some  of  whom  desired  to  meet 
the  Massachusetts  Senator,  who  having  managed  to 
put  them  off  to  a  more  convenient  hour,  had  seated 
himself  at  his  desk,  and  was  busily  preparing  his  mail 
for  the  afternoon  post  North.  Sumner  with  his  arm 
chair  close  to  his  desk,  with  his  long  legs  well  under 
it,  which,  by-the-way,  was  not  movable  but  screwed 
firmly  to  the  floor,  and  with  his  head  bent  low  was 
writing  very  rapidly,  for  he  was,  as  he  expressed  it, 
writing  on  time,  and  needed  to  make  haste.  He  was 
oblivious  of  everything  about  him  but  that  upon 
which  he  was  engaged.  He  would  have  made  a  cap 
ital  representation  of  indefatigable  attention,  of  su 
preme  mental  absorption,  for  the  chisel  of  some  Michael 
Angelo  or  Thorwaldsen.  There  was  the  broad  and 
powerful  back,  the  Herculean  shoulders  and  arms,  the 
splendid  leonine  head,  covered  with  masses  of  thick 
hair,  the  whole  thrown  forward  and  down  into  posi 
tion,  which  together  gave  an  impression  of  such  con 
centration  and  strength  as  one  would  have  to  look 
long  and  far  to  find. 

He  had  been  thus  intently  employed  for  perhaps 
fifteen  or  thirty  minutes,  when,  hearing  his  name  pro 
nounced  and  looking  up,  he  saw  a  tall  man  of  unfa 
miliar  countenance,  standing  in  front  of  and  directly 
over  him.  The  strange  man  was  speaking  and  Sum 
ner  heard  the  words:  "I  have  read  your  speech  twice 
over  carefully.  It  is  a  libel  on  South  Carolina,  and 


280  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Mr.  Butler  who  is  a  relative  of  mine —  '  And  then  he 
heard  no  more,  but  received  without  warning  a  mur 
derous  blow  upon  his  head,  which  the  tall  man  dealt 
with  a  stout  walking  stick  which  he  held  in  his  hand. 
This  blow  was  repeated  in  quick  succession  upon  the 
uncovered  and  now  bleeding  head  of  Mr.  Sumner, 
who  was  stunned  and  blinded  by  the  first  terrible 
stroke  from  the  stick.  Dazed,  and  no  longer  able  to 
distinguish  the  ruffian  who  was  assaulting  him  or  any 
object  in  the  room,  but  impelled  by  the  instinct  of 
self-defense,  Sumner  tried  to  rise  to  grapple  with  and 
disarm  his  brutal  foe.  But  the  desk  under  which  his 
legs  were  thrust  held  him  a  prisoner.  And  though 
thus  pinioned  and  helpless,  the  assault  went  on  with 
the  greatest  ferocity,  until  the  desk,  screwed  to  the 
floor,  was  wrenched  up  by  the  agonized  struggles  of 
the  eloquent  friend  of  man.  Released,  with  body 
bent  forward,  and  arms  thrown  up  to  protect  his 
bleeding  head,  he  staggered  to  his  feet  only  to  fall 
insensible  over  his  desk  to  the  floor  where  his  assail 
ant  continued  the  shower  of  blows,  until  seized  and 
pulled  off  of  his  noble  victim  by  Messrs.  Morgan  and 
Murray,  two  Congressmen  from  the  state  of  New 
York. 

On  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  Sumner  lay,  with  blood 
upon  his  head  and  garments,  with  blood  flowing  from 
many  wounds  and  soaking  into  the  carpet  under 
him,  with  the  pallor  of  death  upon  face  and  brow, 
unconscious  alike  of  pain,  and  his  enemies,  and  the 
awful  horror  of  it  all.  He  was  presently  succored  by 
faithful  friends,  and  borne  to  a  sofa  in  the  lobby, 
where  doctors  dressed  his  wounds,  and  thence  he 
was  carried  to  his  lodgings.  There,  suffering,  bewil- 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  281 

dered,  almost  speechless,  he  spent  the  first  night  of 
the  tragedy  and  of  his  long  years  of  martyrdom. 

The  author  of  this  murderous  and  dastardly  assault 
was  Preston  S.  Brooks,  a  member  of  Congress  from 
South  Carolina,  and  a  nephew  of  Butler,  Mr.  Sum- 
ner's  old  enemy.  There  were  associated  with  him  in 
the  commission  of  the  crime,  two  Southern  accom 
plices,  Lawrence  M.  Keitt,  member  of  Congress  from 
South  Carolina,  and  Henry  A.  Edmundson,  a  mem 
ber  from  Virginia.  Mr.  James  W.  Simonton,  reporter 
of  the  New  York  Times,  and  who  was  an  eye  witness 
of  the  appalling  deed,  testified  before  the  Congres 
sional  Investigation  Committee,  concerning  the  part 
borne  by  Keitt  in  connection  with  the  outrage.  See 
ing  that  Brooks  was  striking  Mr.  Sumner,  who  had 
already  fallen  to  the  floor,  Mr.  Simonton,  with  others, 
ran  towards  them  to  interfere,  when  "  Keitt  rushed 
in,  running  around  Mr.  Sumner  and  Mr.  Brooks  with 
his  cane  raised,  crying,  '  Let  them  alone,  G — d  d — n 
you  ! ' ' 

At  the  time  of  the  assault,  there  were  in  the  ante 
room  of  the  Senate  several  Senators  known  to  be 
hostile  to  Mr.  Sumner.  Among  these  was  Doug 
las,  who  had,  two  days  before,  asked  in  debate 
whether  it  was  Mr.  Sumner's  intention  to  provoke 
some  of  them  to  kick  him  as  they  "  would  a  dog  in 
the  street";  there  was  also  Robert  Toombs,  who,  on 
that  day,  and  a  subsequent  one  from  his  place  in  the 
Senate,  boldly  approved  the  act  ;  there  was,  besides, 
John  Slidell,  of  Louisiana,  who,  with  Mason,  of  Vir 
ginia,  were  to  cut  such  a  sorry  figure  in  the  Rebel 
lion.  That  beautiful  specimen  of  Southern  chivalry 
avowed  without  a  blush,  in  the  Senate,  that  he  and 


282  CHARLES    SUMMER. 

his  friends  in  the  anteroom  heard  "  without  any  par 
ticular  emotion  "  "  that  somebody  was  beating  Mr. 
Sumner." 

On  the  next  day  when  the  Senate  convened,  Mr. 
Wilson,  immediately  after  the  reading  of  the  journal, 
called  the  attention  of  that  body  to  the  outrage 
which  had  been  enacted  in  that  chamber  the  preced 
ing  day  upon  his  colleague,  and  suggested  that  step'j 
should  be  taken  to  redress  the  wrong,  "  and  to  vindi 
cate  the  honor  and  dignity  of  the  Senate."  Mr. 
Seward  thereupon  moved  the  appointment  by  the 
president  of  a  committee  to  inquire  into  the  circum 
stances  attending  the  tragic  affair.  The  appointment 
of  the  committee,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Mason,  was  taken 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  president  and  put  in  those 
of  the  Senate,  who  proceeded  to  exhibit  its  animus 
in  respect  of  the  matter  by  ignoring  the  parliamen 
tary  claims  of  Messrs.  Seward  and  Wilson  to  places 
on  the  committee,  and  by  electing  instead  two 
Southern  Senators  and  three  Northern  ones  under 
Southern  influences  to  conduct  the  proposed  investi 
gation. 

The  Northern  Doughfaces  it  is  well  to  name.  They 
were  a  Mr.  Allen,  of  Rhode  Island;  a  Mr.  Dodge, 
of  Wisconsin;  and  one  Lewis  Cass,  of  Michigan,  who 
the  reader  will  recall  as  having  for  the  sake  of  the 
Presidency,  recanted  his  free  State  opinion  touching 
the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  the  national  Territories. 
The  committee  performed,  to  the  satisfaction  of  those 
who  appointed  it,  its  partisan  and  non-committal 
part,  merely  giving  in  its  report  a  brief  statement  of 
the  facts  of  the  case,  without  any  expression  of 
opinion  thereon,  though  distinctly  instructed  by  the 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  283 

resolution  of  Mr.  Seward  that  so  it  should  do.  It 
begged  to  inform  the  Senate  that  it  could  not  arrest 
or  punish  a  member  of  the  House  for  breach  of  its 
privileges,  and  that  the  most  that  it  could  do  in  the 
premises  was  to  make  a  complaint  to  the  House  of 
which  Brooks  was  a  member.  That  is  what  the  Sen 
ate  did,  by  simply  ordering  that  "a  copy  of  this 
report,  and  the  affidavits  accompanying  the  same,  be 
transmitted  to  the  House  of  Representatives."  And 
there  the  pro-slavery  Senate  dropped  the  matter. 

Quite  otherwise  was  the  subject  treated  by  the 
House,  which  was  at  that  time  presided  over  by  a 
Northern  Speaker  with  Northern  principles,  and 
controlled  by  a  strong  anti-Nebraska  membership. 
The  committee  appointed  to  investigate  the  matter 
was  composed,  as  was  that  of  the  Senate,  of  three 
from  the  North  and  two  from  the  South,  with  this 
decided  difference,  however,  that,  in  the  case  of  the 
House  committee,  the  three  from  the  North  were  not 
of  the  breed  of  Northern  Doughfaces.  They  accord 
ingly  concluded  their  report  to  the  House  with  reso 
lutions  expelling  Brooks,  and  censuring  Keitt  and 
Edmundson.  The  Northern  members  of  the  com 
mittee  were  Lewis  D.  Campbell,  of  Ohio;  Travis  E. 
Spinner,  of  New  York;  and  A.  C.  M.  Pennington,  of 
New  Jersey. 

The  two  Southern  members,  one  of  whom  was 
Howell  Cobb,  of  Georgia,  the  other  some  Southern 
obscurity  from  Arkansas,  of  the  name  of  Greenwood, 
signed  a  minority  report  which  concluded  with  a  reso 
lution  of  want  of  jurisdiction  over  the  "alleged  as 
sault"  case  on  the  part  of  the  House,  and  with  a  cool 
refusal  "  to  express  any  opinion  on  the  subject,"  which 


284  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

the  House  promptly  voted  down  by  a  large  majority. 
Owing  to  the  rule  requiring  a  two-thirds  vote  to 
expel  a  member,  the  resolution  of  expulsion  was 
lost,  the  vote  standing  yeas  121,  nays  95.  Keitt  was 
censured,  while  Edmundson,  probably  for  lack  of 
direct  evidence  implicating  him  in  the  attack  on  Mr. 
Sumner,  escaped. 

Brooks,  in  anticipation  of  the  adverse  action  of  the 
House,  had  placed  his  resignation  in  the  hands  of  the 
Governor  of  South  Carolina,  to  take  effect  on  the 
announcement  by  him  to  the  House  of  his  resigna 
tion.  After  the  vote  on  the  resolution  of  expulsion, 
seeing  how  matters  would  go  with  him  next,  and  to 
avoid  a  vote  of  censure  which  would  have  certainly 
followed,  the  Southern  bully  obtained  the  floor  and 
addressed  the  house  in  vindication  of  himself,  at  the 
close  of  which  he  announced  that  he  was  "  no  longer 
a  member  of  the  Thirty-fourth  Congress." 

In  the  course  of  his  vindication,  which  was  alto 
gether  worthy  of  him,  the  Congressional  ruffian  let 
the  House  into  his  confidence  thus  :  "  I  went  to 
work  very  deliberately,  as  I  am  charged— and  this  is 
admitted — and  speculated  somewhat  as  to  whether  I 
should  employ  a  horsewhip  or  a  cowhide  ;  but  know 
ing  that  the  Senator  was  my  superior  in  strength,  it 
occurred  to  me  that  he  might  wrest  it  from  my  hand, 
and  then — for  I  never  attempt  anything  I  do  not 
perform — /  might  have  been  compelled  to  do  that  which 
I  would  have  regretted  the  balance  of  my  natural  life" 
At  this  point  a  voice  from  the  house  said,  "  He  would 
have  killed  him  !  " 

Brooks's  constituency  vindicated  their  knight  of  the 
bludgeon  by  "triumphantly"  reflecting  him  to  the 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  285 

Thirty-fourth  Congress,  where  in  the  August  follow 
ing  his  resignation  he  again  took  his  seat.  The  fact 
is,  had  Preston  S.  Brooks's  reelection  depended,  not 
alone  upon  the  District  in  South  Carolina,  but  upon 
the  whole  South,  he  would  have  received  it  not  less 
triumphantly.  After  the  commission  of  the  crime  he 
became  the  hero  of  that  section,  was  held  up  for  the 
imitation  of  its  youth,  the  admiration  of  its  man 
hood,  and  for  the  enthusiastic  support  and  gratitude 
of  every  white  man,  woman,  and  child  true  to  its 
interests.  Brooks  had,  verily,  become  the  Southern 
darling  of  the  hour. 

At  a  meeting  of  some  of  his  admirers  "  Gutta- 
percha  "  was  highly  commended  as  a  proper  weapon 
of  reply  to  "  Northern  fanatics."  Another  meeting 
voted  the  champion  a  cane  with  the  inscription  : 
"  Use  knockdown  arguments.'"  Another  still  presented 
him  with  the  new  symbol  of  Southern  chivalry,  bear 
ing  the  classic  legend  "  Hit  him  again.'"  While  yet  a 
fourth  proposed  to  garnish  another  of  the  noble 
parliamentary  weapons  with  "  a  device  of  the  human 
head,  badly  cracked  and  broken."  The  South  had 
gone  mad,  was  indeed  well  advanced  in  the  terrible 
suicidal  and  homicidal  mania  which  was  four  years 
later  to  reach  its  climax  in  the  great  Rebellion. 

The  fever  which  precedes  the  delirium  of  war,  had 
attacked  the  much-suffering  North  also.  The  Kansas 
iniquity  and  the  outrage  upon  Sumner  tended  to 
send  the  blood  of  the  free  States  to  the  point  where 
peace  becomes  impossible,  and  an  appeal  to  force  in 
the  settlement  of  their  long-standing  account  with 
the  slave  States  inevitable.  Excitement  was  every 
where,  excitement  was  filling  the  land  with  the  wide, 


286  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

chaotic  rumblings  of  the  gathering  tempest.  Flashes 
of  the  pent-up  passions  of  a  day  of  wrath,  which  were 
leaping  from  the  Southern  skies,  were  breaking  like 
wise  out  of  the  thunder  cloud  which  had  risen  in  the 
Northern  air  and  was  spreading  over  the  free  States. 

Two  circumstances,  growing  out  of  the  assault 
upon  Mr.  Sumner,  indicated  that  the  tension  of  the 
storm  would  presently  reach  its  point  of  explosion 
One  of  these  is  the  story  of  Henry  Wilson's  denun 
ciation  in  the  Senate  of  the  attack  as  "a  brutal,  mur 
derous,  and  cowardly  assault,"  and  what  came  of  it. 
The  first  thing  which  came  of  it  was  Mr.  Butler's  ex^ 
clamation  from  his  seat — "You  are  a  liar!"  which 
seemed  to  signify  that  the  period  of  argument  was 
fast  passing  away  and  that  the  period  of  violence  was 
fast  coming  in.  The  second  thing  which  came  of  it, 
were  threats  of  personal  violence  from  Brooks's 
friends  and  a  challenge  from  the  bully  himself.  The 
manner  in  which  Mr.  Wilson  met  the  latter  was 
simply  admirable,  at  once  dignified  arid  spirited, 
altogether  worthy  of  the  superior  civilization  of  his 
section. 

"  I  characterized,"  so  runs  Wilson's  reply  to  the 
challenge,  "  I  characterized,  on  the  floor  of  the  Sen 
ate,  the  assault  upon  my  colleague  as  *  brutal,  murder 
ous,  and  cowardly.'  I  thought  so  then.  I  think  so 
now.  I  have  no  qualification  whatever  to  make  in 
regard  to  those  words.  I  have  never  entertained  in 
the  Senate  or  elsewhere,  the  idea  of  personal  respons 
ibility,  in  the  sense  of  the  duellist.  I  have  always 
regarded  duelling  as  the  lingering  relic  of  a  barbarous 
civilization,  which  the  law  of  the  country  has  branded 
as  crime.  While,  therefore,  I  religiously  believe  in 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  287 

the  right  of  self-defense  in  its  broadest  sense,  the  law 
of  my  country  and  the  matured  convictions  of  my 
whole  life  alike  forbid  me  to  meet  you  for  the  pur 
pose  indicated  in  your  letter."  After  this  Wilson 
armed  himself,  for  he  was  determined,  if  assailed,  to 
defend  his  life  at  any  cost. 

The  other  circumstance  was  Anson  Burlingame's 
stern  denunciation  of  the  outrage  on  the  floor  of  the 
House,  and  what  came  of  it.  Burlingame  pictured 
how,  "  The  Senator  from  Massachusetts  sat  in  the 
silence  of  the  Senate  Chamber,  engaged  in  the  em 
ployments  appertaining  to  his  office,  when  a  member 
from  this  House,  who  had  taken  an  oath  to  sustain  the 
Constitution,  stole  into  the  Senate,  that  place  which 
had  hitherto  been  held  sacred  against  violence,  and 
smote  him  as  Cain  smote  his  brother."  Whereupon 
the  following  threatening  scene  ensued  : 

MR.  KEITT  (in  his  seat) — That  is  false. 

MR.  BURLINGAME — I  will  not  bandy  epithets  with 
the  gentleman.  I  am  responsible  for  my  own  lan 
guage.  Doubtless  he  is  responsible  for  his. 

MR.  KEITT — I  am. 

MR.  BURLINGAME — I  shall  stand  by  mine. 

"Sir,"  Burlingame  continued,  "the  act  was  brief, 
and  my  comments  on  it  shall  be  brief  also.  I  de 
nounce  it  in  the  name  of  the  Constitution  it  violated. 
I  denounce  it  in  the  name  of  the  sovereignty  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  which  was  stricken  down  by  the  blow.  I 
denounce  it  in  the  name  of  civilization,  which  it  out 
raged.  I  denounce  it  in  the  name  of  humanity.  I 
denounce  it  in  the  name  of  that  fair  play  which  bul 
lies  and  prize-fighters  respect." 

The  author  of  this  five-time  denounced  crime  was, 


288  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

of  course,  ready  with  a  challenge,  which  was  promptly 
accepted  by  Burlingame,  who  named  the  following 
terms:  "Weapons,  rifles;  distance,  twenty  paces; 
place,  District  of  Columbia;  time  of  meeting,  the  next 
morning."  These  terms  were  modified  by  Congress 
man  Campbell,  who  acted  as  Mr.  Burlingame's  friend, 
so  that  the  place  of  meeting  read,  "  Clifton  House, 
Canada,"  instead  of  District  of  Columbia,  as  in  the 
original.  To  Mr. Campbell's  substitute  Brooks's  friends 
made  great  ado,  alleging  that  it  would  not  be  safe 
for  their  principal  to  travel  through  the  North  to  the 
place  of  meeting,  and  accordingly  refused  to  agree 
to  the  terms,  which  had  the  effect  to  prevent  the 
meeting  from  taking  place.  It  is  possible  that  the 
choice  of  weapons,  as  well  as  the  choice  of  place,  ex 
erted  upon  the  Southern  fire-eaters  a  deterrent  influ 
ence.  For  it  was  understood  that  Burlingame  was  a 
dead  shot  with  the  rifle.  In  naming  it  the  Massachu 
setts  Congressman  meant,  without  doubt,  to  kill  his 
antagonist.  The  meeting  between  Burlingame  and 
Brooks  never  took  place,  but  the  duel  between  Mas 
sachusetts  and  South  Carolina,  freedom  and  slavery, 
was  only  postponed. 

The  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  launched  against 
the  outrage  its  stern  condemnation,  and  called  loudly 
upon  Congress  to  punish  the  wrong-doer.  Public 
meetings  throughout  the  State,  and,  for  that  matter, 
throughout  the  free  States,  testified  to  the  universal 
horror  excited  by  the  crime  at  the  North,  and  the 
vehemence  of  the  tide  of  indignant  feeling,  which 
then  swept  over  the  face  of  that  section.  Men,  with 
out  regard  to  party,  shouted  shame  on  the  dastard 
and  his  deed.  A  tremendous  chorus  of  popular 


BLACK  SPIRITS  AND  WHITE.  289 

amazement  and  indignation  burst  like  thunder  from 
one  end  of  the  free  States  to  the  other. 

President  Wayland,  of  Brown  University,  Provi 
dence,  R.  I.,  who  in  1835  gave  the  Abolitionists  the 
cold  shoulder,  and  actually  defended,  to  Harriet 
Martineau,  the  Broadcloth  mob  which  dragged  Gar 
rison  through  the  streets  of  Boston,  was  in  1856  in  a 
wholly  different  mood.  At  an  indignation  meeting 
in  Providence  he  declared:  "I  was  born  free,  and  I 
cannot  be  made  a  slave.  I  bow  before  the  universal 
intelligence  and  conscience  of  my  country,  and,  when 
I  think  this  defective,  I  claim  the  privilege  of  using 
my  poor  endeavors  to  enlighten  it.  But  to  submit 
my  reason  to  the  bludgeon  of  a  bully  or  the  pistol  of 
an  assassin  I  cannot ;  nor  can  I  tamely  behold  a  step 
taken  which  leads  inevitably  to  such  a  consumma 
tion." 

Peleg  W.  Chandler,  of  Boston,  who  for  ten  years 
had  been  Mr.  Sumner's  political  opponent,  said,  at  a 
great  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall,  that  the  blow  struck  at 
Sumner  was  "  a  blow  not  merely  at  Massachusetts,  a 
blow  not  merely  at  the  name  and  fame  of  our  com 
mon  country,  it  is  a  blow  at  constitutional  liberty  all 
the  world  over,  it  is  a  stab  at  the  cause  of  Universal 
Freedom.  It  is  aimed  at  all  men,  everywhere,  who 
are  struggling  for  what  we  now  regard  as  our  great 
birthright,  and  which  we  intend  to  transmit  unim 
paired  to  our  latest  posterity." 

Professor  C.  C.  Felton,  whose  early  intimacy  with 
Sumner,  the  reader  will  recall,  but  which  the  latter's 
political  course  had  brought  to  an  end,  at  a  public 
meeting  in  Cambridge  confessed  that  while  he  had 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  election  of  his  sometime 
19 


290  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

friend  to  the  Senate,  yet  that  under  the  then  circum 
stances  had  he  "  five  hundred  votes,  every  one  should 
be  given  to  send  him  back  again." 

At  Concord,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  who,  when  he 
spoke,  like  the  shot  fired  by  the  farmers  in  1775,  was 
heard  round  the  world,  said,  as  only  he  could  say  it: 
"  But  I  wish,  sir,  that  the  high  respects  of  this  meeting 
shall  be  expressed  to  Mr.  Sumner,  that  a  copy  of  the 
resolutions  that  have  been  read  may  be  forwarded 
to  him.  I  wish  that  he  may  know  the  shudder  of 
terror  that  ran  through  all  this  community  on  the 
first  tidings  of  this  brutal  attack.  Let  him  hear  that 
every  man  of  worth  in  New  England  loves  his  vir 
tues — that  every  mother  thinks  of  him  as  the  pro 
tector  of  families — that  every  friend  of  freedom 
thinks  him  the  friend  of  freedom.  And  if  our  arms 
at  this  distance  cannot  defend  him  from  assassins,  we 
confide  the  defense  of  a  life  so  precious  to  all  honor 
able  men  and  true  patriots,  and  to  the  Almighty 
maker  of  men." 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  whom  his  best  friend  or 
worst  enemy  could  not  accuse  of  sympathy  for  the 
slave,  proposed  at  the  dinner  of  the  Massachusetts 
Medical  Society,  at  the  Revere  House,  Boston,  this  sen 
timent:  "  The  Surgeons  of  the  City  of  Washington — God 
grant  them  wisdom  !  for  they  are  dressing  the 
wounds  of  a  mighty  empire  and  of  uncounted  gener 
ations." 

It  was,  in  truth,  exactly  as  Henry  Wilson  declared 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  in  reply  to  Butler  of  South 
Carolina,  "  that  of  the  twelve  hundred  thousand 
people  of  Massachusetts,  you  cannot  find  in  the  State 
one  thousand,  administration  office-holders  included, 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  29! 

who  do  not  look  with  loathing  and  execration  upon 
the  outrage  on  the  person  of  their  Senator  and  the 
honor  of  their  State."  And  he  went  on  to  add  what  the 
facts  would  have  borne  out,  that,  "The  sentiment  of 
Massachusetts,  of  New  England,  of  the  North,  ap 
proaches  unanimity."  It  did,  indeed,  thanks  to  the 
violence  of  the  Southern  desperado. 

What  became  of  Brooks?  We  may  as  well  tell  now 
what  remains  to  be  told  in  regard  to  him,  and  thus 
rid  these  pages  of  the  infamous  man.  He  was 
indicted  by  the  Grand  Jury  of  the  District  of  Colum 
bia,  tried,  and  convicted  of  the  crime,  and  sentenced 
to  pay  a  fine  of  three  hundred  dollars.  Eight  months 
after  the  commission  of  the  outrage,  he  expired  in 
great  agony  of  membranous  croup,  in  the  city  of 
Washington.  So  terribly  did  he  suffer,  just  before 
dying,  that  it  was  reported  in  the  newspapers  the 
next  morning  that,  "  He  endeavored  to  tear  his  own 
throat  open  to  get  breath."  His  uncle,  Senator  But 
ler,  did  not  survive  him  long,  but  passed  away  at  his 
far-away  Carolina  home,  in  that  very  month  of  May, 
and  almost  on  the  very  date  on  which,  a  year  before, 
the  assault  on  Mr.  Sumner  was  made.  The  two 
deaths  following  so  quickly  upon  that  horror,  and 
the  one  upon  the  other,  seemed  to  tens  of  thousands 
at  the  North  like  a  direct  interposition  of  a  just  God 
in  the  affairs  of  the  nation.  And  until  we  know  more 
about  the  occult  ways  of  the  Divine  Governor  of  this 
world  of  ours  who  shall  say  that  this  popular  feeling 
was  only  a  silly  popular  superstition  ?  Not  the 
writer  of  these  pages  certainly. 

But  to  return  to  Sumner.  On  the  wings  of  the 
murderous  assault  upon  him,  he  mounted  to  an 


292  CHARLES  SUMNER. 

enduring  place  in  the  Pantheon  of  the  Republic.  He 
became  associated  thenceforth  with  the  weal  of  States, 
his  fate  with  the  fortunes  of  a  great  people.  The 
mad  act  had  done  for  him  what  similar  madness  had 
done  for  similar  victims,  magnified  immensely  his 
name  and  influence,  secured  forever  his  position  as 
an  imposing  historic  character.  The  New  York 
Courier  and  Enquirer  observed  on  this  head  in  the 
summer  of  1856,  as  follows  : 

"  The  fact  is  incontestable,  that,  when  the  Massa 
chusetts  Senator  again  crosses  the  threshold  of  that 
Senate  Chamber,  slavery  will  have  to  confront  the 
most  formidable  foe  it  ever  had  to  face  before  the 
public  eye.  .  .  .  Hitherto  he  has  figured  but  in 
one  character,  the  assailant  of  slavery  ;  henceforth 
he  will  be  also  the  accredited  asserter  and  champion 
of  the  most  sacred  right  of  freedom  of  speech,  and  as 
such  will  command  tenfold  greater  consideration. 
His  antagonists  have  affected  to  despise  him  before, 
and  to  treat  him  with  scorn.  The  day  for  that  has 
passed.  The  public  man,  who  has  once  been  the 
occasion  of  such  an  outburst  of  sympathy  and  good 
will  as  has  within  the  last  week  sprung  from  the 
mouth  of  millions  upon  millions  of  his  countrymen,  is 
no  longer  a  man  to  be  disdained.  He  has  henceforth 
position,  power,  and  security  beyond  any  of  his  ad 
versaries." 

Ah  !  It  was  the  old,  wonderful  story.  The  miracle 
of  miracles  was  again  performed  ;  the  good  man's 
blood  had  turned  into  the  seed-corn  of  his  cause. 

The  story  of  the  good  man's  sufferings  reveals  a 
long  and  harrowing  struggle  for  health.  He  had 
upon  the  head  two  deep  gashes,  which  laid  the  scalp 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  293 

open  to  the  bone.  The  strength  of  the  cranium  and 
the  thick  mass  of  hair  which  covered  the  scalp, 
together,  saved  him,  probably,  from  a  fatal  fracture 
of  the  skull.  Besides  these  injuries  there  were 
bruises  on  his  face,  hands,  and  arms.  Bad  as  these 
were,  they  were  not  the  worst  hurt  which  followed 
the  assault.  Had  there  been  no  nervous  shock, 
Sumner  would  have  speedily  recovered  from  the 
effects  of  those.  But  there  was  a  serious  nervous 
shock.  As  the  case  progressed,  this  was  plainly 
manifested  in  the  patient's  sleeplessness  and  loss  of 
flesh,  in  his  incapacity  of  the  briefest  mental  effort 
without  pain  and  pressure  in  the  head,  and  soreness 
in  the  spine,  also  what  appeared  like  a  partial  paral 
ysis  of  the  motor  muscles  of  the  lower  limbs,  which 
rendered  physical  exertion  extremely  exhausting. 
To  the  physicians  who  were  watching  over  the 
invalid  "  it  was  clearly  evident  that  the  brain  and 
spinal  cord  had  been  the  seat  of  a  grave  and  formid 
able  lesion,"  such  as  would  sometimes  require  months 
and  even  years  to  heal.  It  did  actually  require  years 
in  the  case  of  Sumner. 

From  land  to  land,  during  four  years,  he  passed, 
pursuing  "  the  phantom  of  a  cup  that  comes  and 
goes."  It  was,  at  first,  almost  impossible  for  him  to 
understand  the  extreme  gravity  of  his  injuries.  He 
was  sure  that  he  would  be  well  in  two  weeks  and  at  his 
post  in  the  Senate.  But  the  weeks  became  months, 
and  still  he  was  not  well  or  able  to  resume  his  seat. 
From  Washington,  when  he  could  endure  the  fatigue 
of  so  short  a  journey,  he  went  to  Silver  Springs  near 
by,  where  he  was  the  guest  of  the  venerable  Francis 
P.  Blair.  In  July  he  reached  Philadelphia,  where  he 


294  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

was  tenderly  entertained  at  the  home  of  his  friend, 
Rev.  W.  H.  Furness,  and  later  received  similar  enter 
tainment  at  the  cottage  of  Mr.  James  T.  Furness  at 
Cape  May.  Thence  he  betook  himself  to  Cresson,  in 
Pennsylvania,  where  he  tried  the  effect  of  mountain 
air  upon  his  painful  malady.  Here  he  showed  signs 
of  gratifying  improvement,  but  his  impatience  of 
further  inaction,  and  a  desire  to  go  home  to  vote  for 
Fremont  and  Dayton,  and  for  his  gallant  and  devoted 
friend,  Anson  Burlingame,  led  him  to  turn  his  face 
homeward  at  the  beginning  of  November. 

The  popular  reception,  which  his  return  to  Boston 
evoked,  was  splendid,  enthusiastic,  imposing,  rival 
ing  in  magnitude  and  impressiveness  that  other 
which  he  was  to  receive  eighteen  years  afterward.  It 
was,  in  truth,  a  vast  groundswell  and  surge  of  the 
overflowing  sympathy,  admiration,  and  love  felt  for 
him  within  the  mighty  mother-heart  of  grand  old 
Massachusetts. 

On  Sunday  morning,  November  2d,  Mr.  Sumner 
arrived  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston,  and  went  direct  to 
the  home  of  his  friend,  Professor  H.  W.  Longfellow, 
in  Cambridge.  On  Monday  morning  he  and  others 
drove  to  the  house  of  Amos  A.  Lawrence,  at  Longwood, 
in  the  town  of  Brookline,  where  in  the  afternoon,  he 
was  joined  by  a  large  number  of  invited  guests,  who 
had  driven  to  Longwood  from  the  State  House. 
From  this  point  the  triumphal  journey  into  Boston 
began.  When  the  carriages  reached  the  boundary 
line  of  the  city  they  were  met  by  a  cavalcade  of  a 
thousand  horsemen  and  the  Committee  of  Arrange 
ments,  with  the  Mayor  of  Boston,  Alexander  H.  Rice, 
and  the  venerable  and  illustrious  patriot,  Josiah 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  295 

Quincy,  at  their  head.  Eloquent  words  of  introduc 
tion  by  Professor  F.  D.  Huntington,  now  a  Bishop  in 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  of  welcome  by  Mr. 
Quincy,  and  of  reply  by  Mr.  Sumner  followed,  when 
the  long  and  almost  royal  progress  through  the  city 
commenced. 

Along  the  line  of  march  the  people  had  gathered 
by  the  tens  of  thousands,  demonstrative,  eager  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  Defender  of  Humanity  and  of 
their  liberties.  What  the  multitude  could  not  ex 
press  by  look  and  shout,  inscriptions  upon  the  houses 
helped  to  reveal,  inscriptions  grimly  commemorative 
of  that  black  day  of  May  when  the  black  deed  was 
done  which  laid  low  their  leader,  him  who  then  was 
returning  to  them  bearing  his  sheaves,  and  alack!  his 
wounds  also.  What  wonder  that  they  filled  the  ba 
rouche,  in  which  their  hero  rode,  with  flowers,  and  the 
city  with  loud  huzzas.  At  the  State  House,  amid  in 
describable  scenes,  Professor  Huntington  again  spoke 
eloquent  words  of  introduction,  while  the  Governor 
of  the  Commonwealth,  Henry  J.  Gardner,  greeted 
the  illustrious  invalid  in  a  welcome,  warm  and  gush 
ing  as  from  the  heart  of  the  people  whom  he  repre 
sented.  And  then  Sumner  replied,  or  at  least  he 
attempted  to  reply,  but  was  obliged,  owing  to  failure 
of  voice  and  strength,  to  desist  after  speaking  for  the 
space  of  three  minutes  only. 

Other  expressions  of  the  State's  sympathy  and 
affection  for  the  distinguished  sufferer  there  would 
have  been  had  he  not  himself  checked  them.  In  the 
summer  of  1856,  Governor  Gardner  recommended 
the  assumption  of  the  expenses  of  Mr.  Sumner's  ill 
ness  by  the  commonwealth,  and  the  Senate  promptly 


296  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

adopted  a  resolve  to  the  same  effect.  As  soon  as  Mr. 
Sumner  heard  of  the  motion  he  instructed  Mr.  Bur- 
lingame  to  telegraph  his  positive  declination,  adding 
at  the  same  time,  "  Whatever  Massachusetss  can  give, 
let  it  all  go  to  suffering  Kansas." 

About  the  same  time  a  subscription  was  started  to 
express  "  to  the  Hon.  Charles  Surnner,  in  some  per 
manent  and  appropriate  form,  our  admiration  of  his 
spotless  private  and  public  character,  of  our  lively 
gratitude  for  his  dauntless  courage  in  the  defense  of 
freedom  on  the  floor  of  Congress,  and  especially  our 
unqualified  approbation  of  his  speech  in  behalf  of 
free  Kansas,  delivered  in  the  Senate  on  the  20th  of 
May  last,"  etc.,  etc.  Among  the  early  signers  of  the 
paper  were  Josiah  Quincy,  Henry  W.  Longfellow, 
fared  Sparks,  F.  D.  Huntington,  R.  H.  Dana,  Jr., 
Edward  Everett,  Edwin  P.  Whipple,  Alexander  H. 
Rice,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Amasa  Walker,  Wm. 
Claflin,  and  Eli  Thayer. 

One  thousand  dollars  were  already  subscribed 
when  tidings  of  this  movement  reached  Sumner. 
Grateful  as  the  action  was  to  him  he  did  not  hesitate 
a  moment  as  to  the  course  to  pursue  in  regard  to  the 
matter.  From  his  sick  bed  he  dictated  an  explicit  re 
fusal  to  allow  the  movement  to  proceed  further,  and 
sent  it  to  Mr.  Carlos  Pierce,  the  reputed  originator 
of  the  flattering  project.  "  It  is  enough  for  me,"  so 
ran  the  note,  "  that  you  and  your  generous  associates 
approve  what  I  said.  Such  sympathy  and  support  in 
the  cause,  of  which  I  am  a  humble  representative,  is 
all  that  I  ask  for  myself,  or  am  willing  to  accept. 
But  the  cause  itself  has  constant  claims  on  us  all; 
and  I  trust  you  will  not  deem  me  too  bold,  if  I  ex- 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  297 

press  a  desire  that  the  contributions  intended  for  the 
testimonial  to  me  may  be  applied  at  once,  and  with 
out  abatement  of  any  kind,  to  the  recovery  and  security 
of  freedom  in  Kansas." 

And  this  was  done.  At  a  meeting  of  the  subscribers, 
after  the  receipt  of  his  letter,  it  was  "Resolved,  That 
the  secretary  of  this  meeting  be  instructed  to  sub 
scribe  the  amount  of  funds  in  his  hands  to  aid  the 
cause  of  Freedom  in  Kansas,  in  the  name  of  Hon. 
Charles  Sumner."  And  so  were  the  words  of  the 
brave  soul  in  behalf  of  outraged  Kansas,  "  hardened 
into  deeds."  But  he  was  not  content  with  merely 
diverting  to  Kansas,  contributions  intended  for  him 
self.  He  contributed  directly  and  generously  from 
his  own  pocket,  many  times  over,  timely  aid  to  the 
same  noble  object. 

In  January,  1857,  he  received  his  reelection  as  a 
Senator  of  the  United  States,  practically  with  no  op 
position  within  or  without  the  Legislature.  In  the 
Senate  the  vote  was  unanimous.  In  the  House, 
while  it  was  otherwise,  Mr.  Sumner  got  all  but  twelve 
of  the  three  hundred  and  forty-five  votes  cast. 
These  twelve  non-concurring  votes  were  distributed 
among  not  less  than  nine  candidates,  Robert  C. 
Winthrop,  Sumner's  old  opponent  getting  exactly 
three  of  them  ! 

The  Boston  Daily  Advertiser,  commenting  on  the 
election,  made  some  interesting  and  significant  com 
parisons  of  it  with  that  one  which  occurred  six  years 
before.  It  said  :  "  It  is  impossible  to  refrain  from 
comparing  the  election  of  yesterday  with  Mr.  Sum 
ner's  previous  election  in  the  same  place  six  years 
ago.  Now  he  receives  nearly  all  the  votes,  on  the 


298  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

first  ballot,  taken  on  the  third  day  of  the  session, 
every  member  speaking  aloud  his  vote.  Then  he  re 
ceived  only  the  exact  number  necessary  for  a  choice 
— one  more  than  half  the  whole  number;  and  the 
election  was  not  effected  until  the  twenty-sixth  bal 
lot,  taken  on  the  one  hundred  and  fourteenth  day  of 
the  session  (April  24,  1851),  and  the  votes  were 
thrown  in  sealed  envelopes.  Then  he  was  the  candi 
date  of  a  party  which  threw  27,636  votes  in  the  State, 
at  the  preceding  popular  election,  or  about  one-fifth 
of  the  whole  number.  Now  he  is  the  candidate  of  a 
party  which  threw  108,190  votes  in  the  State,  at  the 
last  popular  election,  or  about  two-thirds  of  the  whole 
number.  Then  he  was  chosen  to  a  body  where  he 
could  expect  to  find  but  two  or  three  associates  sym 
pathizing  with  his  sentiments.  Now  he  is  a  member 
of  a  party  which  has  a  majority  in  the  lower  House 
of  Congress,  and  numbers  a  quarter  of  the  members 
even  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  Truly,  tem- 
Pora  mutantur^  nos  et  mutamur  in  illis" 

"  Still,  and  nevertheless,  and  notwithstanding,"  as 
Professor  Channing,  of  Harvard  University,  once 
began  a  sentence,  Mr.  Sumner's  disability  continued. 
O"1.  the  4th  of  March  he  was  sworn  as  Senator  for  the 
second  term,  and  three  days  later  sailed  for  Havre  in 
search  of  health.  In  December  at  the  opening  of 
Congress,  he  resumed  his  seat  only  to  find  himself,  as 
he  expressed  it,  "  within  the  circumscriptions  of  an 
invalid."  Fully  aware  at  last,  through  a  succession 
of  relapses,  of  the  gravity  of  his  disease,  and  of  the 
necessity  of  letting  patience  have  its  perfect  work  in 
another  endeavor  to  recover  his  lost  vigor  of  body, 
he  sailed  a  second  time  for  Havre,  on  May  22,  1858, 


BLACK    SPIRITS    AND    WHITE.  299 

just  two  years,  the  reader  will  perceive,  after  he  was 
assaulted  in  the  Senate. 

At  Paris,  he  finally  placed  himself  under  the  medi 
cal  care  of  Dr.  Brown-Sequard,  who  to  Mr.  Sumner's 
inquiry  as  to  the  remedy,  replied  with  laconic  brevity, 
u  Fire."  Sumner's  resolution  was  instantly  taken. 
"  When  can  you  apply  it  ?  "  he  asked.  "  To-morrow, 
if  you  please,"  the  Doctor  answered.  "  Why  not  this 
afternoon?"  was  the  patient's  next  question.  And 
that  afternoon,  without  anaesthetics  of  any  kind,  he 
submitted  himself  to  the  treatment  by  fire,  the  torture 
of  the  moxa,  which  Brown-Sequard  has  pronounced 
"  the  greatest  suffering  that  can  be  inflicted  on  mortal 
man,"  indeed  not  once  but  seven  times  did  he  submit 
himself  to  its  agonies. 

In  addition  to  the  moxa,  he  took  cold  and  hot 
douches  at  Aix,  and  sea  baths  at  Havre.  At  Montpel- 
lier,  in  the  South  of  France,  where  he  spent  the  win 
ter,  he  was  cupped  daily  on  the  spine,  and  passed 
eighteen  of  the  twenty-four  hours  in  a  horizontal 
position.  In  the  spring  he  made  a  hurried  visit  to 
Italy,  and  back  again  to  Paris,  where  he  reported 
himself  to  Dr.  Brown-Sequard  who  pronounced  him 
well.  When  Congress  began  in  December,  1859,  the 
Defender  of  Humanity  was  again  in  his  seat,  "  with  a 
certain  consciousness  of  restored  health,"  as  he  re 
cords,  "although  admonished  to  enter  upon  work 
slowly." 

His  empty  seat  during  those  years  was  the  precious 
the  inestimable  contribution  of  Massachusetts  to  the 
holy  cause  in  which  he  was  stricken  down.  Vacant 
it  stared,  voicing  as  no  lips  could  speak  her  eloquent 
purpose  and  her  mighty  passion. 


300  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

But  now  it  behooves  reader  and  writer  to  catch  up 
with  the  progress  of  the  national  tragedy  during  the 
eventful  and  exciting  years  covered  by  the  term  of 
Sumner's  disability.  This,  however,  must  be  done, 
not  at  the  end  of  the  present  chapter,  but  at  the 
beginning  of  the  next. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY. 

A  TRULY  momentous  year  was  1856,  in  the  political 
annals  of  the  Union.  The  strife  between  freedom 
and  slavery  was  raging  the  while  in  Kansas,  and  at 
the  seat  of  the  Federal  Government  at  Washington, 
where  it  culminated  in  the  assault  on  Sumner.  It  is 
memorable  also  as  marking  the  last  triumph  at  the 
polls  of  the  slave-power  in  America,  and  the  first 
appearance  of  the  new  Northern  party  in  national 
politics.  This  year  the  Republican  party  made  its 
debut  on  the  national  stage,  and  swept  the  free  States 
with  the  magnificent  courtesy  of  more  than  one  and 
one-third  million  of  votes. 

If  the  uew  party  of  freedom  failed  to  elect  its  can 
didates,  Fremont  and  Dayton,  neither  did  the  old 
party  of  slavery  succeed  in  securing  for  its  candi 
dates,  Buchanan  and  Breckinridge,  a  majority  of  the 
polls,  by  something  like  nearly  four  hundred  thous 
and  votes  !  The  long  primacy  of  the  South,  and  the 
overlordship  of  the  slave-power  in  the  Union,  drew, 
almost  visibly,  after  this  Pyrrhic  victory,  to  their  vio 
lent  and  tremendous  downfall. 

Seeing  how  matters  must  conclude  for  it  and  its 
ill-gotten  gains,  should  the  excitement,  growing  out 
of  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  continue 
in  the  North,  with  no  abatement  of  its  energy,  the 


302  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

slave-power  hit  upon  a  bold,  bad,  and  desperate  de 
vice  to  compose  it.  This  was  no  other  than  the 
famous  or  infamous  judgment  of  the  Supreme  Court 
in  the  case  of  Dred  Scott,  which  declared  the  uncon 
stitutionally  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  If  that 
Act  was  ab  initio  null  and  void,  it  followed  plainly 
enough  that  its  repeal  could  not  have  worked  any 
legal  detriment  to  the  interests  of  the  free  States  in 
the  upper  division  of  the  Louisiana  Territory.  If  they 
had  nothing  under  the  arrangement  of  1820,  and  the 
Act  of  1854  took  that  nothing  away  from  them,  what 
great  consequence  had  they  suffered  because  of  this 
sort  of  Congressional  addition  and  subtraction  ? 

But  the  North  was  not  deceived  by  the  solemn  and 
partisan  jugglery  of  the  majority  of  the  Judges  on  the 
Supreme  Bench  upon  the  subject.  Its  moral  sense 
was  besides  shocked  by  the  bold  inhumanities  of  the 
decision,  directed  against  the  negro  race.  For  deep 
within  the  Northern  heart,  buried,  to  be  sure,  within 
labyrinthine  selfishness  and  pride,  there  was  an  idea, 
a  feeling,  that  the  black  man  did  have  rights  which 
white  men  were  bound  to  respect,  the  obiter  dicta  of 
the  Supreme  Court  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
The  suspicion,  too,  that  the  highest  judicature  of  the 
land,  one  of  the  coordinate  branches  of  the  national 
Government,  had  only  acted  a  part  assigned  it  by  the 
slave-power,  served  to  add  fuel  to  the  flames  of  the 
agitation,  which  the  authoritative  voice  of  that  tribu 
nal  was  evoked  to  allay.  And  so,  after  all  this  shrewd 
calculation,  the  anti-Nebraska  excitement  was  not 
composed;  it  went  rapidly,  in  fact,  from  bad  to 
worse. 

The  prohibitory  legislation  of   1820,  torn  from  the 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  303 

statute  book  by  the  slave-power,  was  not  blotted  at 
the  same  time  from  the  breasts  of  Northern  freemen. 
Congress  and  the  Supreme  Court  had  not  power  to 
erase  the  great  fiat  of  liberty  written  there.  The 
unconquerable  temper,  with  which  free  Kansas  rose 
with  the  emergency,  with  which  it  encountered  the 
aggressions  and  outrages  of  the  army  of  slavery, 
backed  as  that  army  was  by  the  whole  authority  of 
the  national  executive,  proved  the  folly  and  futility 
of  the  repeal  ;  proved  also  the  folly  and  futility  of 
the  "  squatter  sovereignty  "  dogma  as  an  instrument 
for  introducing  slavery  into  the  Territories.  When 
the  slave-leaders  perceived  that  this  much-vaunted 
dogma  was  unequal  to  the  introduction  of  slavery 
into  the  Territories,  it  was  promptly  discarded  by 
them,  and  another,  better  adapted  to  the  accomplish 
ment  of  their  purpose,  selected  in  its  stead. 

That  other  was  Calhoun's  supreme  dogma  of  the 
"  self-extension  of  slavery  under  the  Constitution," 
as  Benton  phrased  it,  together  with  its  corollary,  the 
obligation  of  Congress  to  protect  by  law  the  slave 
holder  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  Constitutional  right  to 
slave  labor,  against  a  hostile  Territorial  majority. 
Theretofore  the  Southern  shibboleth  had  been  :  Con 
gress  has  no  power  to  legislate  on  the  subject  of 
slavery  in  the  Territories;  now  it  became  the  duty  of 
Congress  to  safeguard  the  institution  within  the  Ter 
ritories.  Not  until  a  Territory  had  attained  to  State 
hood,  according  to  this  latest  position  of  the  South, 
could  the  principle  of  popular  sovereignty  operate  to 
exclude  a  master  and  his  slaves. 

Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  altogether  too  great  and 
selfish  a  politician  to  enact  the  role  of  a  mere  tool. 


304  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

If  he  consented  to  serve  the  slave-power,  it  was 
doubtless,  because  he  calculated  that  he  could  serve 
self  at  the  same  time,  could  advance  designs  of  his 
upon  the  Presidency.  He  knew  that  his  popular- 
sovereignty  doctrine  measured  the  full  length  of  his 
political  tether.  Not  an  inch  beyond  the  principle 
set  up  by  him  in  1854,  in  solution  of  the  Territorial 
problem,  did  he  dare  to  venture.  To  shift  his  posi 
tion  taken  then  to  this  last  and  desperate  pretension 
of  the  South  would  be  passing,  politically,  upon 
himself  a  death  sentence.  And  Douglas  was  not  of 
the  self-renouncing  kind.  He  loved  power  too  greed 
ily  to  imperil  his  leadership  at  the  North  even  to 
please  the  slave-power. 

The  "  little  giant  "  drew  defiantly  and  proudly  off 
from  his  Southern  allies  on  the  Lecompton  issue. 
On  that  issue  the  erstwhile  united  and  invincible 
Democratic  party  ran  sharply  upon  a  question  which 
was  to  shake  it  to  its  centre  and  eventually  split  it 
in  two.  In  this  posture  of  affairs  between  Douglas 
and  fellow-Democrats  at  the  South  an  old  prophecy 
of  Calhoun  found  fulfillment.  For  Northern  repre 
sentatives,  even  so  audacious  and  powerful  a  public 
man  as  was  Douglas,  were,  when  they  came  to  act, 
looking  not  to  the  South,  but  to  the  North  for  their 
political  cue. 

Douglas,  puissant  as  he  undoubtedly  was  in  Illinois, 
dared  not  to  bow  before  the  imperious  will  of  the 
slave-power  at  this  juncture.  Willing  or  unwilling 
he  had  to  move  with  the  currents  of  public  opinion 
in  his  own  State.  Indeed  he  owed  his  reelection  to 
the  Senate  over  Lincoln,  a  few  months  later,  to  his 
courageous  and  uncompromising  tone  intheLecomp- 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  305 

ton  debate.  The  wrath  of  the  South  burned  hotly 
against  its  old  confederate  in  aggression  and  wrong. 
In  obedience  to  its  behest,  he  was  deposed  from  the 
Chairmanship  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Territor 
ies,  and  stood,  it  was  bruited,  in  some  danger  of  being 
read  out  of  the  Democratic  party. 

Events  were  plainly  getting  beyond  the  control  of 
the  politicians,  escaping  as  from  Pandora's  box  on 
every  hand,  to  the  confusion  and  discomfiture  of  the 
compromisers  at  the  North,  and  of  those  at  the  South. 
It  was  an  instance  of  the  irrepressible  fermentation 
of  contrary  ideas,  working  from  within  outwardly  in 
obedience  to  rooted  social  differences  and  antago 
nisms  between  the  sections.  The  South  was  the  vic 
tim  of  a  system  of  labor,  which  early  withdrew  from 
it  the  power  of  choice  and  then  drove  it  forward 
blindly  by  the  force  of  an  inexorable  necessity  upon 
its  fate.  The  North  was  likewise  the  creature  of  an 
industrial  principle,  whose  resultant  interests  and 
institutions  slowly  took  away  from  it  the  power  of 
self-determination  in  its  conflicts  with  slave-labor, 
and  impelled  it  in  a  line  of  social  expansion  as  dis 
tinct  from  that  of  the  South  as  is  light  from  dark 
ness,  civilization  from  barbarism. 

Never  to  any  wide  extent  were  the  free  States 
Abolitionist.  They  opposed  slavery  so  far  only  as 
slavery  menaced  their  interests,  and  no  further. 
They  loved  the  Union;  they  had  no  love  for  the  slave. 
To  preserve  the  one  they  were  ever  disposed  to  sac 
rifice  the  freedom  of  the  other.  But  happily  for  the 
slave,  his  freedom  could  not  be  immolated  utterly  on 
the  altar  of  the  Union,  without  entailing  upon  his 
immolators,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  loss  of  political 
20 


306  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

power,  and  this  possible  consequence  to  themselves 
served  to  withhold  the  Northern  people  from  aban 
doning  him  entirely  to  his  wretched  fate. 

From  the  first,  therefore,  the  passion  of  the  free 
States  for  sectional  ascendency  pushed  them  gradu 
ally  away  from  the  South  and  toward  the  slave.  As 
the  contest  for  political  supremacy  waxed  between 
the  sections,  the  line  of  separation  lengthened 
between  the  North  and  the  South,  and  lessened 
between  the  North  and  the  slave,  until  in  due  time 
liberty  and  the  Union  grew  to  be  one  and  insepar 
able.  But  this  converging  of  the  sectional  interests 
of  the  free  States  and  of  freedom  to  the  slave  upon  a 
single  point,  was  a  long  and  tumultuous  process,  as 
the  reader  well  knows. 

The  thing  which  the  South  demanded,  the  North 
could  not  yield;  and  that  which  the  North  asked  for, 
the  South  could  not  grant.  The  South  demanded 
more  slave  territory,  more  slave  States,  while  the 
North  was  compelled  in  self-defense  to  resist  all  fur 
ther  extension  of  slavery  to  the  soil  of  the  Republic, 
and  to  oppose  the  admission  of  more  slave  States  into 
the  Union.  Certainly  the  two  sections  were  not  fed 
with  the  same  food,  for  what  might  be  meat  to  the 
one,  was  apt  to  prove  poison  to  the  other.  A  start 
ling  episode  like  John  Brown  and  Harper's  Ferrv 
was  the  flashlight  by  which  destiny  revealed  to 
themselves  and  to  each  other,  the  hearts  of  those 
natural  and  irrepressible  enemies. 

In  these  circumstances,  it  did  not  take  that  wise  man, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  long  to  discover  for  the  Northern 
people  that  their  Union  could  not  endure  "  perma 
nently  half  slave  and  half  free."  The  discovery  of 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  307 

that  momentous  fact  had  been  made  by  seventy  years 
of  experiment  and  conflict.  This  truth,  during 
that  long  period,  had  deepened  and  spread  at  the 
South  ;  it  had  deepened  and  spread  at  the  North, 
more  slowly  to  be  sure,  but  with  not  less  certainty  or 
constancy  than  in  the  other  half  of  the  country.  The 
logic  of  Southern  aggression  tended  to  make  the 
Union  all  slave,  that  of  Northern  resistance  to  make 
it  all  free. 

The  sectionalism  of  the  Douglas  wing  of  the  Demo 
cratic  party,  differed  in  degree  only  from  the  sec 
tionalism  of  the  Republican  party.  Neither  would 
go  the  whole  length  of  Southern  demand.  Both 
went  part  way,  the  latter  stopping  in  this  respect 
considerably  short  of  the  former.  But  the  same  force 
which  arrested  the  one  halted  the  other  also.  That 
force  was  the  growing  consciousness  of  the  people  of 
the  free  States  of  deep  and  abiding  differences  and 
antagonisms  between  the  interests  and  institutions 
of  their  section  and  those  of  the  slave  States. 

But  to  fail  the  South,  at  this  juncture,  in  one  par 
ticular  was  to  fail  it  altogether.  So  at  least  reasoned 
her  leaders.  To  throw  her  back,  with  her  inferior 
colonizing  resources,  upon  the  dogma  of  popular 
sovereignty  as  an  instrument  for  opening  new  regions 
for  the  extension  of  slavery,  was  not  the  deed  of  a 
friend,  but  of  a  foe.  Douglas,  therefore,  and  his  fac 
tion,  the  South,  grew  to  hate  with  a  bitterness  hardly 
less  than  that  with  which  it  hated  Lincoln  and  his 
party.  Both  were  denounced  as  enemies  which  no 
Southern  man,  true  to  his  section,  could  support. 

In  the  Charleston  Convention  the  two  wings  of  the 
Democratic  party  collided  in  a  contest  of  unbridled 


3°  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

passion.  The  South  demanded  as  a  sine  qua  non  to 
any  further  union  between  the  party  North  and  the 
party  South,  the  incorporation  into  the  party  plat 
form  of  the  dogma  that  slavery  extends  itself  under 
the  Constitution  to  the  national  Territories  ;  together 
with  its  corollary  that  Congress  is  bound  to  safeguard 
by  law  the  human  property  of  slaveholders  within 
the  Territories,  popular  sovereignty  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding.  But  an  act  of  such  self-stultifica 
tion  and  madness,  the  Douglas  men  dared  not  com 
mit.  Their  refusal  to  place  the  party  upon  this  South 
ern  plank  was  the  signal  for  the  disruption  of  the 
Democratic  organization  which  was  speedily  followed 
by  the  dissolution  of  the  Union. 

But  it  is  time  to  return  to  the  story  of  Sumner's 
life.  He  had  not  resumed  his  seat  in  the  Senate 
many  months,  before  his  collisions  with  its  slavemas- 
ters  began  anew.  One  of  the  earliest  of  these  skir 
mishes  he  had  with  Mason,  of  Virginia,  over  a  memo 
rial  from  Mr.  Frank  B.  Sanborn,  of  Concord,  Mass., 
representing  to  the  Senate  how  he  had  been  treated 
by  certain  persons  acting  under  orders  from  one  of 
its  special  committees.  Mr.  Sanborn's  case  grew  out 
of  John  Brown's  raid  into  Virginia,  and  an  attempt 
on  the  part  of  the  Senate  Committee,  appointed  to 
investigate  the  matter,  to  compel  him  to  testify  touch 
ing  his  knowledge  of  the  expedition.  As  Mr.  Sanborn 
was  not  disposed  to  go  willingly  to  Washington,  the 
sergeant-at-arms  of  the  Senate  deputed  certain  per 
sons  to  take  him  into  custody  and  convey  him  to  the 
capital.  This  the  deputies,  on  the  evening  of  April 
3,  1 36o,  proceeded  to  do.  They  succeeded  partially 
in  the  accomplishment  of  their  purpose,  viz.,  in  get- 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  309 

ting  Mr.  Sanborn  into  their  possession  and  slipping 
handcuffs  upon  him,  and  were  about  to  slip  him  into 
a  carriage,  when,  owing  to  the  presence  of  mind  and 
courage  of  a  sister,  the  friendly  succor  of  neighbors 
and  the  efficacy  of  the  Habeas  Corpus,  they  were 
finally  foiled  and  forced  to  release  their  prisoner. 

These  circumstances  were  recited  to  the  Senate  by 
Mr.  Sumner  who  presented  the  memorial.  Where 
upon  Mason,  who  was  the  Chairman  of  the  Harper's 
Ferry  Committee  moved  "  that  the  memorial  be  re 
jected."  This  brought  Mr.  Sumner  to  his  feet  with  the 
remark  :  "  The  Senator  moves  .  .  .  that  the 
memorial  be  'rejected';  and  he  makes  this  unaccus 
tomed  motion  with  a  view  to  establish  a  precedent 
in  such  a  case.  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  establish  a  prec 
edent  also  in  this  case,  by  entering  an  open,  unequiv 
ocal  protest  against  such  an  attempt.  Sir,  an  ancient 
poet  said  of  a  judge  in  hell,  that  he  punished  first, 
and  heard  afterwards  —  castigatque  auditque  and 
permit  me  to  say,  the  Senator  from  Virginia,  on  this 
occasion,  takes  a  precedent  from  that  court."  Of 
course,  Mr.  Mason  (who  professed  not  to  be  used  to 
such  languag*  within  or  without  the  Senate),  was  ter 
ribly  shocked  by  this  sulphurous  and  burning  allusion 
to  his  motion  to  reject  the  memorial  of  Mr.  Sanborn. 

Sumner  was  not  content  with  striking  when  struck, 
as  in  the  instance  just  given,  but  he  would  take  the 
initiative  as  well.  And  when  this  he  did,  the  slave- 
power  had  occasion  to  think  of  him  with  emotion  for 
many  a  day  afterward.  His  long  disability  and  ab 
sence  from  his  post  had  not  abated  a  tittle  of  his  hatred 
of  slavery,  or  of  its  domination  in  the  Union.  That 
hatred  and  the  Puritanical  sternness  and  aggressive- 


310  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ness  which  characterized  his  opposition  to  the  slave- 
power  had,  if  anything,  increased  during  those  years 
of  illness.  In  public  life  there  was  no  man  who  so 
hated  slavery  as  did  Sumner.  Certainly  not  Seward, 
nor  Chase,  nor  Hale,  nor  Wilson,  nor  even  Giddings. 
Sumner's  hatred  of  it,  as  a  political  evil,  surpassed 
theirs,  while  to  this  unequaled  hostility  was  added 
an  intolerance  and  abhorrence  of  it  as  a  moral  wrong, 
felt  only  by  such  men  as  Garrison,  Phillips,  Theodore 
D.  Weld,  James  G.  Birney,  Elizur  Wright,  Frederick 
Douglass,  Parker  Pillsbury,  and  Stephen  S.  Foster. 
He  was,  in  truth,  in  1860,  the  incarnation  of  iron  will 
and  iron  convictions  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  politi 
cal  and  moral. 

All  this  appears  in  that  grand  and  terrible  philip 
pic,  entitled  "  The  Barbarism  of  Slavery,"  delivered 
by  him  in  the  Senate  June  4,  1860.  In  this  speech, 
which  was  made  on  the  bill  for  the  admission  of 
Kansas  as  a  free  State,  Sumner  condensed  the  whole 
horror  and  curse  of  slavery,  reflected  its  image  with 
a  fierce  realism  and  scorn,  which  was  worthy  of  Gar 
rison  himself. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  Republic  it  was  general, 
almost  universal,  in  the  slave  States  to  look  upon 
slavery  as  a  political  evil  and  a  moral  wrong.  Slave- 
masters  were  among  the  loudest  and  sincerest  in  de 
nunciation  of  it  as  such.  They  were  among  the  most 
earnest  of  the  early  Abolitionists,  who  hoped  for  its 
ultimate  extinction.  But,  owing  to  several  causes  of 
a  political-economic  nature,  discussed  by  the  writer 
in  his  "  Life  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison,"  under  the 
caption,  "The  Hour  and  the  Man,"  chapter  IV.,  page 
92,  and  to  which  he  begs  to  refer  the  interested  reader, 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  31! 

this  early  expectation  in  regard  to  slavery  failed  to  be 
realized.  The  evil  on  the  contrary  entered  upon  a 
period  of  extraordinary  social  and  political  expansion 
and  power.  And  with  this  change  there  was  inaugu 
rated  another.  The  early  toleration  of  the  South 
gave  place  in  time  to  passionate  attachment  to  the 
monster.  It  became  no  longer  an  evil,  a  wrong  to  be 
extirpated,  but  "a  positive  good  "  to  be  cherished,  as 
Calhoun  proclaimed  it  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  in 

1837- 

Presently  devotion  to  slavery  grew  to  be  general 
through  the  South.  In  1860,  when  Sumner  made  his 
speech  on  the  "  Barbarism  of  Slavery,"  it  was  practi 
cally  universal.  The  slave  States  no  more  blushed  for 
their  social  system,  but  by  the  mouths  of  their  leaders 
vaunted  it  rather  as  "  the  most  solid  and  durable 
foundation  on  which  to  rear  free  and  stable  political 
institutions  ";  as  "  the  corner-stone  of  our  republican 
edifice "  ;  as  "a  great  moral,  social,  and  political 
blessing";  as  "  the  normal  condition  of  human  so 
ciety  "  ;  as  "  ennobling  to  both  races,  the  white  and 
the  black,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

Sumner's  speech  was  in  part  an  elaborate  and 
merciless  exposure  of  the  groundlessness  of  these 
assumptions.  He  exposed  the  barbarism  of  slavery 
under  the  two  heads  of  the  character  of  slavery  and  of 
the  character  of  slavemasters.  In  the  preparation  of 
his  argument,  Sumner  had  evidently  acquainted 
himself  with  the  entire  body  of  the  laws  and  the 
literature  bearing  on  the  subject.  He  came  with 
chapter,  section,  and  page  of  the  black  book  of 
slavery  at  his  finger's  end.  The  whole  awful  record 
he  unrolled  during  the  four  hours  that  he  held  the 


312  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

attention  of  the  Senate.  The  enormities  of  the  slave- 
code  and  the  enormities  of  the  slave-character  filed 
in  a  long  and  terrific  procession  before  the  Senate 
and  the  country.  Slavemasters  were  made  to  see 
themselves  and  the  dehumanizing  monster  which 
they  were  hugging,  as  they  appeared  to  the  moral 
sense  of  the  age. 

His  exhibition  of  the  character  of  slavemasters  in 
Congressional  history  was  as  pungent,  effective,  and 
thorough  as  truth  and  the  arts  of  the  orator  could 
make  it.  With  the  Congressional  Globe  in  one  hand, 
he  drew  aside  with  the  other  the  curtain  of  years,  a 
curtain  which  concealed  a  series  of  shameful  and  tur 
bulent  scenes,  such  as  have  rarely  disgraced  the  annals 
of  parliamentary  proceedings.  Just  as  the  records  had 
caught  the  "  lords  of  the  lash,"  pictures  of  vulgarity 
and  violence,  they  were  reproduced  with  their  swagger, 
their  insolence,  and  oaths,  with  their  bowie-knives, 
their  bludgeons,  and  firearms,  defiant  of  the  laws  of 
debate,  of  decency,  and  of  the  Deity  alike.  And  this 
stern  exposure  he  fitly  closed  with  a  view  of  "  the 
melancholy  unconsciousness  which  constitutes  one  of 
the  distinctive  features  of  this  barbarism." 

"  Next  to  the  unconsciousness  of  childhood,"  ob 
served  the  orator,  "  is  the  unconsciousness  of  barbar 
ism.  The  real  barbarian  is  unconscious  as  an  infant; 
and  the  slavemaster  shows  much  of  the  same  char 
acter.  No  New  Zealander  exults  in  his  tattoo,  no 
savage  of  the  Northwest  coast  exults  in  his  flat  head 
more  than  the  slavemaster  of  these  latter  days 
—always,  of  course,  with  honorable  exceptions — 
exults  in  his  unfortunate  condition.  The  slave- 
masterhugs  his  disgusting  practice  as  the  Carib  of  the 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  313 

Gulf  hugged  cannibalism,  and  Brigham  Young  now 
hugs  polygamy.  The  delusion  of  the  Goitre  is 
repeated.  This  prodigious  swelling  of  the  neck, 
nothing  less  than  a  loathsome  wallet  of  flesh 
pendulous  upon  the  breast,  and  sometimes  so 
enormous,  that  the  victim  is  unable  to  support  the 
burden,  crawls  along  the  ground,  is  common  to  the 
population  on  the  slopes  of  the  Alps  ;  but  accustomed 
to  this  deformity  the  sufferer  comes  to  regard  it 
with  pride — as  the  slavemasters  with  us,  unable  to 
support  their  burden,  and  crawling  along  the 
ground,  regard  slavery — and  it  is  said  that  those  who 
have  no  swelling  are  laughed  at  and  called  "  goose- 
necked." 

If  the  speech  four  years  before  aroused  all  the 
dark  and  malignant  passions  of  the  South  against 
him,  this  one  could  do  no  less,  for  while  it  did  not 
single  out  by  name  particular  representatives  of  slavery 
for  punishment,  as  did  the  former,  its  general  scope 
and  overwhelming  effect  carried  its  argument  and 
the  charge  of  colossal  guilt  and  iniquity  home  to  the 
individual  consciousness  of  each  as  well  as  all.  He 
had  attacked  the  whole,  he  had  attacked  every  mother's 
son  of  the  slave  oligarchy.  The  slavemasters  of  the 
Senate  and  House  were,  metaphorically  and  literally, 
ready,  during  the  progression  of  the  terrible  philippic 
and  at  its  conclusion,  to  tear  the  Defender  of  Humanity 
to  pieces. 

A  newspaper  writer  sketched  at  the  time  the  scenes 
in  the  chamber  during  the  delivery  of  the  speech: 
"Mr.  Breckinridge  remained  all  the  time,"  wrote  an 
occasional  correspondent  of  the  Chautauqua  Demo 
crat,  "  and  sat  with  an  open  book  in  his  hands,  pre- 


314  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tending  to  read;  but  his  eyes  wandered  from  the 
page,  and,  with  a  frown  upon  his  brow,  he  finally 
gazed  at  the  speaker  till  he  closed.  Jeff.  Davis  pre 
tended  to  be  reading  the  Globe,  but  it  was  plain  to  be 
seen  by  the  heading  of  the  paper  that  it  was  upside- 
down.  Wigfall  seemed  in  torment.  He  listened  re 
spectfully  awhile,  and  then  glided  silently  around 
from  one  Senator  to  another,  and  conferred  in  whis 
per.  He  seemed  to  be  hatching  mischief;  but  the 
grave  shake  of  the  head  of  the  older  Senators  doubt 
less  kept  this  uneasy,  restless  desperado  quiet.  Hunter 
sat  like  a  rock,  immovable,  and  listened  respectfully 
to  the  whole.  Not  a  muscle  moved  upon  his  placid 
face  to  denote  what  was  going  on  in  his  mind. 
Toombs  heard  the  most  of  it  quietly,  and  with  as 
much  of  a  don't-care  look  as  his  evil  passions  would 
permit.  Near  the  close,  '  Sheep's-Gray  '  Mason  came 
in  and  took  his  seat,  and  commenced  writing  a  letter. 
He  evidently  intended  to  show  the  galleries  that 
Sumner  was  too  small  for  him  to  notice.  But  he 
soon  found  a  seat  in  a  distant  part  of  the  hall,  and  an 
easy  position,  where  he  sat  gloomily  scowling  upon 
the  orator  till  he  sat  down.  When  the  speech  was 
about  half  through,  Keitt,  the  accomplice  of  Brooks 
in  his  attempted  assassination  of  Mr.  Sumner,  came 
in  and  took  a  seat  near  Senator  Hammond.  For 
awhile  he  sat  gazing  about  the  galleries,  evidently  to 
notice  the  dramatic  effect  of  his  presence  upon  the 
audience  there.  But  few  seemed  to  notice  him.  By 
degrees  he  began  to  pay  attention  to  the  speech. 
.  .  .  Curry,  of  Alabama,  and  Lamar,  of  Missis 
sippi,  members  of  the  other  House,  though  South 
erners  of  the  straitest  sect,  could  not  conceal  their 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  315 

delight  at  the  oratory  and  classic  and  scholarly  feast 
before  them.  They  were  scholars  and  orators  them 
selves,  and  could  appreciate  an  intellectual  treat, 
though  the  sentiments  were  so  obnoxious. 

"  On  the  Republican  side  breathless  attention  pre 
vailed.  Those  who  immediately  surrounded  the 
Senator  were,  Mr.  Wilson,  Senator  Bingham,  John 
Hickman,  Preston  King,  and  Solomon  Foot.  Mr. 
Seward  sat  in  his  usual  seat,  and  scarcely  moved 
during  the  delivery  of  the  great  speech." 

By  the  time  Sumner  had  finished  speaking,  the 
slavemasters  of  the  Senate  had  hit  upon  an  answer, 
and  this  Mr.  Chestnut,  of  South  Carolina,  was  selected 
to  make.  And  this  was  the  answer:  "  Mr.  President — 
After  the  extraordinary,  though  characteristic,  speech 
just  uttered  in  the  Senate,  it  is  proper  that  I  assign 
the  reason  for  the  position  we  are  now  inclined  to  as 
sume.  After  ranging  over  Europe,  crawling  through 
the  back  door  to  whine  at  the  feet  of  British  aristoc 
racy,  craving  pity,  and  reaping  a  rich  harvest  of 
contempt,  the  slanderer  of  States  and  men  reappears 
in  the  Senate.  We  had  hoped  to  be  relieved  from 
the  outpouring  of  such  vulgar  malice.  We  had  hoped 
that  one  who  had  felt,  though  ignominiously  he 
failed  to  meet,  the  consequences  of  a  former  inso 
lence  would  have  become  wiser,  if  not  better  by  ex 
perience.  In  this  I  am  disappointed,  and  I  regret  it. 
Mr.  President,  in  the  heroic  ages  of  the  world  men 
were  deified  for  the  possession  and  the  exercise  of 
some  virtues — wisdom,  truth,  justice,  magnanimity, 
courage.  In  Egypt,  also,  we  know  they  deified  beasts 
and  reptiles;  but  even  that  bestial  people  worshiped 
their  idols  on  account  of  some  supposed  virtue.  It 


316  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

has  been  left  for  this  day,  for  this  country,  for  the 
Abolitionists  of  Massachusetts,  to  deify  the  incarnation 
of  malice,  mendacity,  and  cowardice.  Sir,  we  do  not  in 
tend  to  be  guilty  of  aiding  in  the  apotheosis  of  pusil 
lanimity  and  meanness.  We  do  not  intend  to  con 
tribute,  by  any  conduct  on  our  part,  to  increase  the 
devotees  at  the  shrine  of  this  new  idol.  We  know 
what  is  expected  and  what  is  desired.  We  are  not 
inclined  again  to  send  forth  the  recipient  of  PUNISHMENT 
howling  through  the  world,  yelping  fresh  cries  of  slander 
and  malice.  These  are  the  reasons,  which  I  feel  it  due 
to  myself  and  others  to  give  to  the  Senate  and  the 
country,  why  we  have  quietly  listened  to  what  has 
been  said,  and  why  we  can  take  no  other  notice  of 
the  matter." 

To  this  characteristic  Southern  answer  Mr.  Sum- 
ner,  gaining  the  floor  with  difficulty,  replied  briefly 
thus,  addressing  the  President:  "Only  one  word. 
I  exposed  to-day  the  Barbarism  of  Slavery.  What  the 
Senator  has  said  in  reply  I  may  well  print  as  an  ad 
ditional  illustration.  That  is  all." 

Mr.  Chestnut's  wrathful  little  performance  was 
charged  to  the  muzzle  with  explosives,  with  savage 
and  intolerable  hate.  It  was  the  typical  Southern 
answer  to  anti-slavery  arguments,  with  the  blud 
geon  and  the  bowie-knife  left  out.  But,  if  they  were 
left  out,  it  was  for  the  occasion  only,  as  an  incident 
which  occurred  on  the  fourth  day  after  the  speech 
evinced.  About  six  o'plock  in  the  afternoon  of  that 
day,  Mr.  Sumner  was  called  on  by  a  stranger,  who 
introduced  himself  as  a  Southerner  and  slaveholder, 
and  demanded  of  the  "  slanderer  of  States  and  men," 
an  explanation  of  his  speech,  and  avowed  his  inten- 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  317 

tion  to  hold  him  responsible  therefor.  But  the  De 
fender  of  Humanity,  though  an  ardent  peace  man, 
who  eschewed  war  and  the  duel  and  all  appeals  to 
force  for  the  settlement  of  differences  between  nation 
and  nation  and  man  and  man,  as  unworthy  of  a  Chris 
tian  age,  nevertheless,  believed  with  no  less  ardor  in 
the  right  and  the  duty  of  self-defense  when  put  to  it 
by  bullies  and  assassins.  He  therefore  ordered  the 
ruffian  to  leave  the  room,  which  he  did,  but  not  before 
breathing  out  vengeance  against  the  author  of  "  The 
Barbarism  of  Slavery,"  and  threatening  to  return 
with  three  others  who  had  come  with  him  from  Vir 
ginia  expressly  to  hold  the  orator  responsible. 

After  having  this  notice  of  intended  violence  served 
upon  him,  Mr.  Sumner  sent  for  his  colleague,  Henry 
Wilson,  who  promptly  repaired  to  the  lodgings  of  his 
friend.  And  while  there,  a  second  unknown  man 
called  to  see  Sumner,  but  when  he  was  apprised  that 
the  object  of  his  call  was  not  alone,  he  suspiciously 
declined  to  enter.  A  few  hours  later  three  strange 
men  called,  but  when  they  were  informed  that  they 
could  not  see  the  Massachusetts  Senator  alone,  they, 
too,  turned  away  with  the  sanguinary  message  that 
they  would  call  again  in  the  morning  for  a  private  in 
terview,  and  if  they  did  not  get  it  they  would  cut  his 
blanked  throat  before  the  next  night. 

Such  a  murderous  message  was  not  ignored  by  the 
friends  of  Mr.  Sumner;  on  the  contrary,  Anson  Bur- 
lingame  and  John  Sherman  slept  that  night  in  a  room 
opening  into  the  bedroom  of  their  friend,  prepared  to 
teach  Southern  fire-eaters  that  if  blood  was  to  be 
spilt,  Northern  men  proposed  to  be  on  hand  at  the 
next  spilling  appointment,  and  join  in  the  operation. 


3*8  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Nothing,  however,  came  of  the  matter.  The  bloody- 
minded  visitors  failed  to  repeat  their  call,  either  that 
night  or  the  next  morning. 

The  noise  of  the  incident  reaching  the  ears  of  the 
Mayor  of  Washington,  that  official  requested  Mr. 
Sumner  to  make  an  affidavit  of  the  facts,  but  this, 
owing  to  a  want  of  faith  in  the  magistrates  of  that 
city,  he  declined  to  do.  The  original  offender,  a  well- 
known  office-holder  of  Virginia,  was  at  length  dis 
covered,  and  brought  to  Mr.  Sumner's  room  by  the 
Mayor.  The  fellow  apologized  for  the  part  he  had 
taken  in  the  affair,  but  denied  all  knowledge  of  the 
others  who  had  left  the  sanguinary  message.  With 
out  Sumner's  being  aware  of  it  at  the  time,  faithful 
friends  stood  watch  over  him  at  night,  and  attended 
him  as  a  body-guard  between  his  lodgings  and  the 
Senate.  This  latter  service  was  performed  by  Kan 
sas  citizens  under  the  command  of  Augustus  Wattles. 
From  the  door  of  the  house  to  the  door  of  the  Senate 
and  vice  versa,  all  unknown  to  the  object  of  their 
solicitude,  these  determined  men  followed  him  day 
after  day,  with  revolvers  in  hand. 

The  speech  had  other  results.  Coming  as  it  did 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Presidential  campaign,  it 
produced  a  sensation  among  the  army  of  politicians 
and  editors,  who  attach  higher  value  to  party  suc 
cess  than  to  everlasting  principles.  Many  there  were 
among  this  always  too-numerous  class,  and  who  per 
haps,  have  never  been  more  so  than  during  the  period 
of  the  national  canvass  of  1860,  regretted  the  delivery 
of  the  speech,  and  bewailed  the  fancied  harm  it  would 
inflict  upon  the  Republican  party  in  the  contest.  But 
as  time  passed  and  the  contest  waxed,  the  squad  of 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  319 

croakers  and  compromisers,  who  were  troubled  and 
anxious  about  everything  under  the  sun  in  the  world 
of  politics  except  freedom  for  the  slave,  learned  that 
the  speech  had  not  injured  the  chances  of  their 
party's  success,  but  had  instead  really  improved 
them  with  the  common  people,  began  to  sing  an 
other  tune  in  regard  to  it  and  its  brave  and  eloquent 
author. 

The  speech  was  printed  as  a  campaign  document 
in  several  large  editions,  and  sent  broadcast  over  the 
free  States,  while  the  author  was  in  urgent  demand 
as  a  speaker  throughout  the  North.  In  Massachu 
setts  he  spoke  many  times  during  the  canvass,  and  in 
New  York  once,  when  he  made  a  powerful  speech 
on  "  The  Origin,  Necessity,  and  Permanence  of  the 
Republican  Party,"  in  which  he  restated  the  argu 
ment  against  slavery,  but  with  this  single  exception, 
possibly  from  fear  of  a  relapse  he  did  not  speak  out 
of  his  own  State,  though  again  and  again  importuned 
to  do  so  by  Republican  committees  from  Maine  to 
Illinois. 

The  alarmists  and  loud-mouthed  "friends  of  the 
Union  "  converted  "  The  Barbarism  of  Slavery "  to 
their  own  mischievous  purposes.  In  it  they  professed 
to  descry  the  real,  but  concealed  character  and  aims 
of  the  Republican  party,  the  Black  Republican  party, 
as  it  was  called,  to  make  it  odious  with  the  people  of 
the  free  States.  The  dissolution  of  the  dear  Union  in 
the  event  of  the  triumph  of  that  party  at  the  then 
approaching  elections  was  held  up  to  frighten  the 
North  into  a  refusal  to  support  the  Republican  candi 
dates.  A  vote  for  Lincoln  was,  in  sooth,  a  vote  for 
disunion,  and  to  Sumner's  speech  the  alarmists 


320  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

pointed  for  confirmation  of  that  gloomy  vaticina 
tion. 

Here  is  one  way  in  which  the  New  York  Herald, 
taking  the  speech  for  a  text,  artfully  held  up  the  ter 
rible  consequences  to  the  country  of  Republican  suc 
cess:  "  But  there  is  one  characteristic  of  this  speech 
which  is  in  perfect  accordance  with  the  policy  of  the 
Black  Republican  party  in  the  present  campaign. 
The  bloody  and  terrible  results  which  must  ensue,  if 
that  party  succeeds  in  getting  possession  of  the  Fed 
eral  Government,  are  kept  carefully  out  of  view. 
John  Brown's  practice  is  taught,  but  there  is  no  word 
of  John  Brown.  The  social  condition  of  fifteen  popu 
lous,  rich,  and  powerful  States  is  to  be  revolution 
ized;  but  not  a  hint  of  possibility  of  resistance  on 
their  part,  or  of  the  reactive  effect  of  such  resistance 
upon  the  aggressive  North,  is  dropped." 

Whoever  else  trimmed  and  tacked  his  principles 
and  convictions  to  weather  the  gusty  currents  of  the 
times,  Sumner  did  not.  No  stress  or  fury  of  the 
political  elements,  no  impending  peril  and  disaster, 
could  make  him  turn  from  his  course  and  fly  before 
the  storm.  Throughout  the  campaign  which  termi 
nated  in  the  election  of  Lincoln,  he  held  his  undevi- 
ating  way  toward  the  restoration  of  the  Republic  to 
its  original  anti-slavery  character,  when  freedom  was 
national  and  slavery  sectional;  to  the  emancipation 
of  the  Government  from  the  domination  of  the  slave- 
power,  to  the  total  annihilation  of  the  idea,  wherever 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Constitution  extended,  whether 
in  the  Territories  or  the  District  of  Columbia,  or  on 
the  high  seas  under  the  national  flag,  that  man  can 
hold  property  in  man. 


RED   SPIRITS   AND    GREY.  321 

The  uncompromising  spirit  which  characterized  his 
course  before  the  elections,  characterized  it  not  less 
afterwards,  when  the  anti-election  alarmists  doubled 
their  activity  and  the  apprehensions  of  the  friends  of 
the  Union  at  the  same  time.  In  that  period  of  dread 
ful  suspense,  which  intervened  between  Lincoln's 
election  and  the  beginning  of  secession,  it  seemed 
almost  as  if  the  whole  North  was  in  a  panic  of  fright, 
and  ready  to  suggest  or  support  any  concession  to 
the  South,  in  order  to  save  the  Union.  "  Give,  give, 
give,"  was  in  the  mouths  of  the  most  powerful  poli 
ticians  and  leaders  of  the  victorious  party  of  freedom. 
Lincoln,  Seward,  Thurlow  Weed,  and  company,  were 
in  the  mood  for  making  extraordinary  concessions 
to  the  South,  and  sacrifices  of  the  anti-slavery  prin 
ciples  of  their  party  to  induce  Jefferson  Davis,  How- 
ell  Cobb,  William  L.  Yancey,  and  company  to  re 
frain  from  breaking  up  the  precious  Union  and 
brotherhood  of  right  and  wrong,  for  which  the  Gov 
ernment,  as  organized  and  administered,  had  stood 
for  seventy  years.  At  every  door  and  on  every  brow 
sat  gloom  and  apprehension.  An  appalling  uncer 
tainty  was,  indeed,  scaring  statesmen  and  people. 

But  the  thoughts  and  words  of  Sumner  were  not 
those  of  the  terrified  people  and  leaders.  There  was 
light  on  but  one  difficult  and  perilous  path,  the  path 
of  duty,  of  national  righteousness.  In  this  one  true 
way  he  confidently  planted  his  feet.  Thick  fogs 
were  around  him,  a  wild,  chaotic  sea  of  doubt  and 
danger  encircled  him  and  the  country,  but  he 
hesitated  not,  nor  swerved  to  the  right  hand  or  to  the 
left,  to  find  an  easier  and  safer  way  of  escape. 
Straight  on  and  up  he  climbed,  calling  through  the 
21 


322  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

rising  darkness  and  tumult  to  his  groping  country 
men  to  follow.  Nothing  is  settled  which  is  not 
right.  Peace,  ever-enduring  peace,  comes  only  to 
that  people  who  dare  to  put  down  sin,  and  lift  up 
righteousness,  rang  firm  and  clear  from  him,  in  this 
tremendous  crisis  in  the  life  of  the  nation.  He  was, 
in  very  truth  then,  the  faithful  one. 

He  saw  the  supreme  peril  which  impended  over 
the  Republic,  and  felt  assured  that  it  was  not 
in  secession  and  civil  war,  but  in  the  timidity  and 
selfishness,  which,  in  order  to  avert  these,  were 
disposing  the  Northern  people  and  their  leaders 
to  compromise  the  principles  of  liberty,  inclin 
ing  then  to  make  fresh  and  disastrous  concessions 
to  slavery.  If  his  anxiety  was  great,  his  vigil 
ance,  earnestness,  and  activity  rose  to  the  high  level 
demanded  of  him  in  the  emergency.  No  uncertainty 
vexed  his  conscience,  or  disturbed  his  courage. 
Whatever  questions  admitted  of  conciliatory  treat 
ment,  the  slavery  question  admitted  of  no  back 
down  on  the  part  of  the  free  States.  Not  another 
inch  of  concession  should  be  made  by  them  to  the 
evil  power  which  had  devoured  their  peace  and 
trodden  down  their  best  interests,  and  which  no  sur 
render,  short  of  absolute  and  unconditional,  could 
permanently  pacify.  If  disunion  and  civil  war  were 
crouching  in  the  rough  way  of  the  nation's  duty,  the 
nation  must  not  turn  aside  to  avoid  them.  It  ought, 
on  the  contrary,  resolutely,  regardless  of  conse 
quences,  to  seek  first  to  establish  itself  in  justice  and 
liberty.  This  bravely  and  finally  done,  he  did  not 
doubt  that  then  every  other  good  thing  would  be 
added  to  it. 


RED    SPIRITS   AND    GREY.  323 

Seeing  how  matters  were  with  people  and  politi 
cians,  and  the  temptations  which  were  assailing  them 
through  their  fears  to  betray  liberty  to  her  ancient 
foe,  Sumner  seized  every  opportunity  which  came  to 
him  to  fix  their  wavering  faith,  to  steady  their  falter 
ing  purpose,  to  bring  the  Government  back  to  its 
earlier  and  better  policy,  when  freedom  and  not 
slavery  was  national.  His  timely  lecture  on  "  Lafa 
yette,  The  Faithful  One,"  was  among  the  potent 
instrumentalities  employed  by  him  in  achieving  this 
result.  In  exalting  Lafayette,  and  unrolling  the 
splendid  record  of  his  glorious  life,  where  fidelity  to 
liberty  shone  conspicuous  and  supreme,  Sumner  held 
up  to  the  living  this  lofty  historic  personage  for 
guidance  and  inspiration,  and  with  the  flame  of  the 
illustrious  Frenchman's  sacred  and  unconquerable 
animosity  to  slavery,  the  lecturer  sought  to  kindle  to 
a  consuming  blaze  the  flickering  opposition  of  the 
North  to  the  American  barbarism  and  the  long-en 
during  tyranny  of  the  slave-power. 

As  the  term  of  Buchanan  drew  to  its  close,  and 
that  of  Lincoln  to  its  commencement,  the  apprehen 
sions  of  the  North  increased  apace,  and  the  opera 
tions  of  the  alarmists  increased  apace  also.  The 
pressure  put  upon  Congress  to  induce  the  adoption 
of  conciliatory  measures  was  redoubled.  A  Boston 
delegation  of  white-livered  friends  of  the  Union,  with 
Edward  Everett  as  its  head,  went  to  Washington  to 
urge  upon  Northern  representatives  the  necessity  for 
mutual  concessions  in  the  interest  of  harmony  and 
the  preservation  of  the  dear  Union.  Mr.  Sumner  has 
recorded  how  the  timid  old  orator  went  to  him  at  his 
lodgings,  and  with  much  emotion  besought  him  to 


324  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

bring  forward  some  conciliatory  proposition,  saying, 
"  You  are  the  only  person  who  can  introduce  such  a 
proposition  with  a  chance  of  success."  And  Sumner 
has  recorded  his  reply  also.  u  You  are  mistaken  in 
supposing  that  I  have  success  with  compromise," 
said  he  to  the  venerable  time-server  and  trimmer, 
"  if  I  could  bring  it  forward  ;  if  I  am  strong  with  the 
North,  it  is  because  of  the  conviction  that  I  cannot 
compromise  ;  but  the  moment  I  compromised  I,  too, 

should  be  lost." 

Thrice  happy  it  was  that  at  this  juncture  Massa 
chusetts  had  not  an  Edward  Everett  in  the  Senate, 
or  seated  in  her  gubernatorial  chair.  In  her  new 
governor  the  commonwealth  found  a  tower  of 
strength,  while  in  him  Sumner  found  a  man  after  his 
own  heart.  Firm  indeed  was  John  A.  Andrew  against 
the  clamor  for  compromise.  In  January,  1861,  he 
wrote  Sumner  in  Washington:  "  From  war,  pestilence, 
and  famine,  from  all  assaults  of  the  world,  the  flesh, 
and  the  devil,  good  Lord,  deliver  us,  but  most 
especially  from  any  compromise  with  traitors,  or  any 
bargain  with  slavery  !  " 

With  another  time-server  and  trimmer  Sumner 
had  a  characteristic  interview  about  this  time.  This 
one  was  James  Buchanan.  He  had  sought  an 
audience  with  the  President  in  relation  to  a  subject 
touching  the  state  of  the  country.  When  the  conver 
sation  was  concluded  on  this  head,  Sumner  said, 
"  Mr.  President,  what  else  can  we  do  in  Massachusetts 
for  the  good  of  the  country  ?  "  "  Much,"  was  the  re 
ply.  "  What  ?  "  queried  Sumner.  "  Adopt  the  Crit- 
tenden  propositions,"  responded  the  Chief  Magistrate. 
"  Is  that  necessary  ? "  asked  the  Senator  with  a  BACK- 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  325 

BONE.  "  Yes,"  answered  the  President,  who  belonged 
unmistakably  to  the  breed  of  political  invertebrates. 
"  Massachusetts  has  not  yet  spoken  directly,"  was 
Sumner's  answer ;  "  but  I  feel  authorized  to  say  that 
such  are  the  unalterable  convictions  of  her  people,  they 
would  see  their  State  sunk  below  the  sea,  and  turned 
into  a  sand-bank,  before  they  would  adopt  proposi 
tions  acknowledging  property  in  men,  and  disfranchis 
ing  a  portion  of  her  population." 

Northern  compromisers,  among  other  reactionary 
measures,  urged  the  repeal  or  modification  of  the 
Personal  Liberty  laws  in  conciliation  of  the  South. 
There  were  attempts  in  Massachusetts  to  obtain  the 
abrogation  of  the  laws  for  the  protection  of  fugitive 
slaves.  To  William  Claflin,  then  Chairman  of  the 
Republican  State  Committee,  and  President  of  the 
Senate,  Sumner  wrote  touching  this  subject  :  "  In 
the  name  of  liberty,  I  supplicate  you  not  to  let  her 
(Massachusetts)  take  any  backward  step — not  an  inch, 
not  a  hairs  breadth."  And  to  Governor  Andrew  he 
closed  one  of  his  letters  with  words  which  betray  an 
agony  of  anxiety  lest  Massachusetts  should  retreat 
from  the  high  ground  occupied  by  her  before  the  elec 
tions.  "  In  God's  name  stand  firm !  Don't  cave, 
Andrew!  "  he  wrote.  "  Save  Massachusetts  from  any 
'surrender,' THE  LEAST!" 

Sumner's  solicitude  and  activity  at  this  crisis  was 
a  potent  influence  in  strengthening  many  a  weak 
back  in  the  Legislature,  and  making  the  adoption 
of  any  material  concession  to  slavery  impossible. 
Governor  Andrew's  unflinching  and  uncompromising 
front  stood  watch  over  the  Personal  Liberty  laws 
and  warded  off  the  evil  machinations  of  the  com- 


326  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

promisers.  In  February,  1861,  he  wrote  Sumner  how 
he  had  made  known  to  "some  persons  that  they 
could  not  get  anything  through  this  room  [the  Council 
Chamber]  not  conformable  to  certain  principles,  and 
which  did  not  contain  certain  details,  unless  they 
marched  it  through  by  dragoons." 

Sumner's  letters  to  the  Governor  from  January  17 
to  February  20,  1861,  are  eloquent  of  the  excitement 
and  apprehensions  of  the  times,  of  the  author's  firm 
ness,  vigilance,  and  fidelity  in  the  great  cause  of 
country  and  humanity.  Their  sustaining  power  was 
of  immense  account  to  John  A.  Andrew  in  those  early 
and  critical  weeks,  beginning  his  term  in  the  execu 
tive  chair  of  the  State.  "  I  do  not  think  we  should 
allow  this  opportunity  to  pass,"  Sumner  wrote  him, 
"without  trying  the  question,  whether  a  single  State 
can  break  up  the  Union.  What  is  it  worth,  if  held 
by  any  such  tenure?"  And  again:  "The  question 
must  be  met  on  the  Constitution  as  it  is  and  the  facts 
as  they  are,  or  shall  we  hereafter  hold  our  Govern 
ment  subject  to  this  asserted  right  of  secession. 
Should  we  yield  now — and  any  offer  is  concession— 
every  Presidential  election  will  be  conducted  with 
menace  of  secession  by  the  defeated  party."  South 
Carolina,  Mississippi,  Florida,  and  Alabama  had 
already  seceded  and  raised  the  standard  of  rebellion. 
Before  the  end  of  the  month  of  January,  Georgia  and 
Louisiana  were  to  do  likewise.  On  the  2ist  the 
Senators  of  the  seceding  States  made  their  dramatic 
exit  from  the  Senate.  Treason  and  the  plottings  of 
traitors  filled  the  air  of  the  national  capitol  with 
rumors  of  impending  violence.  The  panic  of  the 
compromisers,  in  consequence,  grew  every  twenty- 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  327 

four  hours  in  magnitude,  and  threatened   to   precipi 
tate  the  free  States  into  a  dishonorable  retreat. 

On  the  very  day  that  Jefferson  Davis  and  company 
withdrew  from  the  Senate,  Sumner  wrote  Governor 
Andrew:  "Pray  keep  our  beloved  Commonwealth 
firm  yet  a  little  longer,  and  the  crisis  \\ill  be  passed. 
Save  her  from  surrender.  Nothing  she  can  do  will 
stay  secession.  IMPOSSIBLE."  And  two  days  later  : 
"  Nothing  that  Massachusetts  can  do  now  can  arrest 
one  single  State.  There  can  be  no  other  result 
except  our  own  humiliation,  and  a  bad  example 
which  will  be  felt  by  all  other  States.  If  Massachu 
setts  yields  one  hair's  breadth,  other  States  may  yield 
an  inch  or  a  foot,  a  furlong  or  a  mile." 

Again,  a  few  days  later,  he  wrote  the  Governor  : 
"  The  mistake  of  many  persons  comes  from  this — 
they  do  not  see  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  revo 
lution,  where  reason  is  dethroned,  and  passion  rules 
instead.  If  this  were  a  mere  party  contest,  then  the 
circulation  of  speeches  and  a  few  resolutions  might 
do  good.  But  what  are  such  things  in  a  revolution? 
As  well  attempt  to  hold  a  man-of-war  in  a  tempest 
by  a  little  anchor  borrowed  from  Jamaica  Pond;  and 
this  is  what  I  told  the  Boston  Committee  with  regard  to 
their  petition."  "  I  have  but  one  prayer:  Stand  firm, 
keep  every  safeguard  of  Human  Rights  on  our  statute- 
book,  and  save  Massachusetts  glorious  and  true." 

Rumors  were  now  flying  thick  of  plots  to  seize 
Washington  by  the  rebels,  to  convert  the  depart 
ments  into  rebel  forts,  etc.  "  More  than  the  loss  of 
forts,"  Sumner's  correspondence  with  the  Governor 
continues,  "arsenals,  or  the  national  capital,  I  fear 
the  loss  of  our  principles. 


328  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

"  These  are  now  in  greatest  danger.  Our  Northern 
Fort  Sumter  will  be  surrendered,  if  you  are  not 
aroused.  In  my  view,  the  vacillation  of  the  Repub 
licans  is  more  fatal  than  that  of  Buchanan."  And 
again  thus:  "  Every  word  of  concession  thus  far  has 
done  infinite  mischief — first,  by  encouraging  the 
slavemasters,  and  secondly,  by  demoralizing  our 
friends,  and  filling  them  with  doubt  and  distrust." 
And,  finally,  when  the  pressure  of  apprehensions  began 
to  lift  from  his  mind,  and  light  to  break  through  the 
gloom:  "  The  heart-burnings  and  divisions  showing 
themselves  in  our  party  a  few  weeks  ago  are  none  less 
active.  Those  fatal  overtures  will  fall  to  the  ground. 
Oh,  that  they  never  had  been  made  !  "  Certain  con 
ciliatory  propositions,  contained  in  a  speech  by 
Seward  in  the  Senate,  and  made  to  placate  the  South 
and  "  Save  the  Union,"  were  undoubtedly  the  "  fatal 
overtures,"  alluded  to.  Four  days  before  Lincoln's 
future  Secretary  of  State  delivered  the  objectionable 
speech,  he  read  it  to  Sumner,  who  pleaded  in  vain 
with  him  to  omit  the  foolish  and  futile  offers  to  the 
South  which  it  contained. 

This  period  of  appalling  crisis  and  suspense,  so 
crowded  with  miserable  scenes  of  weak  and  vacillat 
ing  leaders,  so  full  of  wretched  and  bootless  efforts 
and  overtures  to  satisfy  the  slave-power,  was  abruptly 
terminated  by  the  roar  of  cannon  in  Charleston 
Harbor.  It  was  the  Southern  answer  to  the  fatal 
overtures  of  the  friends  of  the  Union.  The  sort  of 
response  which  the  North  would  make  to  the  chal 
lenge  was  at  once  apparent  in  the  tremendous  popu 
lar  uprising  which  followed  the  bombardment  of 
Sumter.  The  Union  must  and  shall  be  preserved  was 


RED    SPIRITS    AND    GREY.  329 

the  mighty  purpose  which  swept  the  free  States 
together,  and  launched  them  as  one  man  against  the 
Rebellion. 

Sumner,  as  was  his  wont,  had  lingered  in  Washing 
ton  after  the  close  of  Congress.  He  was  in  Wash 
ington  when  President  Lincoln  issued  his  first  call 
for  troops.  There  he  remained,  busying  himself 
attending  to  public  duties  appertaining  to  him  as 
a  Senator  and  patriot,  until  the  afternoon  of  April  i8th, 
when  he  left  for  the  North.  At  Baltimore  he  got  off 
the  train  and  went  to  Barnum's  Hotel,  where  he 
meant  to  put  up  for  the  night.  That  the  city  was  in 
a  state  of  unusual  excitement  he  soon  perceived. 
On  his  way  from  the  hotel  to  the  home  of  an  old 
family  friend,  where  he  took  tea  and  spent  the  eve 
ning,  he  found  that  the  excitement  had  increased. 
He  himself  was  addressed  in  a  manner  not  to  be  mis 
taken.  Returning  that  evening  to  the  hotel  he  was 
met  by  an  acquaintance  who  enlightened  him  as  to  the 
object  of  the  excitement,  which  had  risen  during  the 
evening  to  the  dimensions  of  a  great  mob.  He  was 
informed  that  it  was  after  him,  that  it  had  already  been 
to  the  hotel  in  quest  of  him. 

Having  learned  so  much,  he  pushed  on  to  Barnum's 
and  called  for  the  key  of  his  room,  when  he  was  taken 
into  a  retired  spot  by  the  proprietor  and  an  attache 
of  the  hotel  and  put  in  possession  of  the  facts  of  the 
case,  and  of  the  danger  he  was  in  personally,  and  in 
which  the  house  was  also  from  the  mob  should  they 
return  again  during  the  night.  But  in  all  that  city 
there  was  no  place  in  which  Sumner  could  take  refuge 
other  than  the  hotel,  and  as  a  traveler  he  insisted 
upon  his  rights  under  the  circumstances,  much  as  he 


330  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

regretted  the  peril  which  his  presence  in  the  house 
might  involve  the  property  of  the  proprietor.  He 
was  then  given  a  room  in  a  wing  of  the  hotel  less 
accessible  to  the  mob  should  they  attack  the  house 
during  the  night.  The  greatest  secrecy  was  observed 
as  to  the  number  and  location  of  the  room  occupied 
by  Mr.  Sumner,  as  an  additional  safeguard  against 
the  spirit  of  mischief  which  was  abroad  in  the  city 
that  night,  and  which  was  to  enact  next  day  those 
scenes  of  riot,  bloodshed,  and  treason  which  can 
never  be  forgotten. 

In  the  grey  of  the  next  morning  Mr.  Sumner  left 
the  hotel  for  the  Philadelphia  Depot,  where  he 
boarded  the  northward-bound  train.  Between  the 
two  cities  his  train  passed  that  which  was  transport 
ing  the  Sixth  Massachusetts  Regiment  to  the  national 
capital.  Before  Sumner  reached  Philadelphia  the 
tragedy  of  the  iQth  of  April,  1861,  had  been  begun 
and  finished  in  the  streets  of  Baltimore,  and  the  first 
bloodshed  of  the  war  had  passed  into  history. 

On  his  arrival  in  New  York,  he  called  on  Major 
Charles  Devens  and  his  battalion,  hurrying  like  the 
then  glorious  Sixth  to  the  defense  of  the  national 
capital.  Sumner  addressed  the  men,  giving  them  for 
a  watchward:  "Massachusetts,  the  Constitution,  and 
Freedom."  The  time  for  speech,  however,  had 
ended,  and  the  time  for  doing  and  dying  had  come. 
And  this  no  one  recognized  more  quickly  and 
heartily,  peace  advocate  though  he  was,  than 
Sumner.  "  Blood  and  iron,"  was  the  stern  but  simple 
formula  for  saving  the  Union.  "  Blood  and  iron,"  as 
a  recipe  for  destroying  slavery,  he  believed  could 
prove  no  less  potent. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA. 

THE  two  antagonistic  ideas  of  the  Union,  after 
seventy  years  of  expansion  and  conflict,  had  crashed 
together  in  the  storm  of  civil  war.  Northern  interests 
were  not  separable  from  the  Union.  To  it,  un 
doubtedly,  the  free  States  owed  their  "  unprecedented 
increase  in  population,  their  surprising  development 
of  material  resources,  and  their  rapid  augmentation 
of  wealth."  Naturally  enough,  therefore,  they  held 
in  abhorrence  a  Southern  Confederacy.  For  destruc 
tion  of  the  Union  carried,  as  a  consequence,  ruin  to 
all  this  growth  and  prosperity. 

The  war  on  the  part  of  the  free  States  was  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  Union,  and  for  no  other  purpose. 
Lincoln's  indifference  as  to  the  fate  of  slavery,  in  this 
emergency  of  the  Republic,  was  hardly  less  complete 
or  shocking  than  was  that  of  Douglas,  who  cared  not 
whether  slavery  was  voted  up  or  voted  down  in  the 
national  Territories,  since  popular  sovereignty  was 
vindicated.  Lincoln,  as  President,  was  not  concerned 
as  to  whether  slavery  survived  or  perished,  if  only 
the  Union  survived.  As  a  man  he  was  probably 
not  indifferent  on  this  point  ;  but,  as  President,  he 
avowedly  meant  slavery  within  the  States,  and  in 
trenched  within  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  the 
land,  no  harm  from  the  war  power  of  the  Government 
over  which  he  presided.  He  was  openly,  notoriously, 


332  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

for  maintaining  the  Constitution  as  it  was,  the  Union 
as  it  was,  even  to  the  execution  of  its  infamous 
Fugitive  Slave  Laws. 

It  took  two  years  to  reveal  to  the  President  and 
the  Republican  party  the  folly  of  such  a  purpose,  the 
madness  of  a  statesmanship  which  was  pouring  out 
blood  and  treasure  to  preserve  the  federation  of  two 
contrary  social  systems  under  a  single  general  gov 
ernment,  when  the  opportunity  offered  of  putting 
an  end  to  one,  and  of  establishing  forever  the  other. 
At  length  it  was  perceived  beyond  a  peradventure 
that  the  institution,  which  the  administration  was 
preserving,  was  the  pith,  the  marrow,  and  backbone 
of  the  Rebellion.  It,  too,  was  seen  that  the  fortunes 
of  the  slave  and  the  fortunes  of  the  Union  were  not 
detachable  and  distinct  the  one  from  the  other,  but 
identical  and  indissoluble.  Then  it  was  that  the 
slave  was  emancipated  and  made  a  soldier  to  save  a 
Union  essential  to  the  supremacy  of  Northern  ideas 
and  to  the  security  of  Northern  interests  and  institu 
tions  in  America. 

Sumner,  during  the  ante-bellum  period  of  crisis 
and  suspense,  recognized,  with  all  his  old-time 
clarity  of  vision,  the  constitutional  limitations  of  the 
political  movement  against  slavery.  He  did  not 
propose  to  touch  the  evil  within  the  States,  because 
he  had  not  the  power.  To  the  utmost  verge  of  the 
Constitution  he  pushed  his  opposition.  Here  he 
drew  up,  ready  to  cross  this  Rubicon  of  the  slave- 
power  should  justificatory  cause  arise.  Such  he 
considered  was  the  uprising  of  the  South  in 
rebellion.  Treason  canceled  the  covenants  of  the 
Constitution,  and  discharged  the  North  from  their 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  333 

further  observance.  He  was  at  last  untrammeled 
by  political  conditions,  free  to  carry  the  war  into 
Africa.  Cathago  est  delenda  was  thenceforth  con 
stantly  on  his  lips. 

It  is  the  vogue  now  to  extol  the  marvelous  sagac 
ity  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  And  the  writer,  too, 
will  join  in  the  panegyric  of  his  great  qualities.  But 
in  the  matter  of  emancipation  that  wise  man  was  not 
infallible,  the  opinion  of  his  latest  biographers  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding.  He  waited  for  the  people, 
but  the  people  were  really  ready  for  the  act,  as  a  war 
measure,  before  he  was.  When  he  issued  the  Eman 
cipation  Proclamation,  the  South  but  a  little  later 
began  to  wreigh  the  military  necessity  of  a  similar 
movement.  Sagacious,  undoubtedly,  the  President 
was, — wonderfully  so;  but  slow  at  times,  also,  to  a 
surprising  degree.  And  this  was  true  with  regard  to 
his  conduct  in  relation  to  the  liberation  of  the  slaves. 

To  have  saved  the  Union  with  slavery  was  surely 
not  such  a  preservation  of  it  as  mere  worldly  prudence 
ought  to  have  dictated.  All  that  it  could  possibly 
have  accomplished  was  a  short  postponement  of  the 
final  struggle  for  mastery  between  what  was  morally 
and  industrially  \vrong,  and  what  was  morally  and  in 
dustrially  right,  in  the  Republic.  A  day  of  wrath 
this  struggle  would  have  been  in  1900  as  it  was  in 
1861.  To  put  off  this  day,  then,  would  have  consum 
mated  the  most  stupendous  crime  of  fathers  against 
children  of  modern  times.  Yet  such  was  distinctly 
Mr.  Lincoln's  purpose,  as  President.  It  certainly 
was  not  Mr.  Sumner's,  as  Senator.  Justice  was  his 
solitary  expedient,  right  his  unfailing  sagacity.  Of 
no  other  American  statesman  can  this  be  so  un- 


334  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

qualifiedly  asserted.  Here  he  is  the  transcendent 
figure  in  our  political  history. 

And  yet  he  was  no  fanatical  visionary,  Utopian 
dreamer,  but  a  practical  moralist  in  the  domain  of 
politics.  When  President  and  party  refused  to  heed 
him,  and  turned  from  his  simple  and  straightforward 
remedy  to  try  others,  he  did  not  break  with  them, 
nor  sulk  at  his  post.  On  the  contrary,  foot  to 
foot,  and  shoulder  to  shoulder,  he  pulled  with  both 
as  far  as  they  would  go.  Where  they  halted  he 
could  not.  Stuck,  as  the  wheels  of  State  and  of  the 
war  were  in  those  dreadful  years,  in  the  mire  of 
political  expediency  and  pro-slavery  hunkerism,  he 
appealed  confidently  to  that  large,  unknown  quantity 
of  courage  and  righteousness  latent  in  the  North,  to 
set  the  balked  wheels  again  moving. 

The  policy  of  forbearance  toward  slavery,  which 
characterized  to  so  remarkable  an  extent  the  early 
part  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  administration,  was  at  first  in 
terpreted  liberally  by  Mr.  Sumner.  The  President 
seemed  to  be  making  haste  slowly  to  attack  the 
enemy  at  a  vital  point,  which  course,  during  the  first 
months  of  the  war,  Sumner  cordially  approved.  And 
this  approval  he  communicated  to  Mr.  Lincoln  in  the 
month  of  May  preceding  the  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
adding,  however,  that  the  President  "must  be  ready 
to  strike  when  the  moment  came."  Upon  the  hap 
pening  of  that  event,  Sumner  felt  that  the  time  had 
arrived  for  the  adoption  of  a  Presidential  policy  of 
active  hostility  toward  the  peculiar  institution;  and 
this  conviction  he  imparted  to  the  President  two 
days  after  the  Bull  Run  disaster.  But  Mr.  Lincoln 
received  the  suggestion  with  undisguised  impatience. 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  335 

No,  the  moment  had  not  come  to  strike  slavery.  In 
stead  of  striking  slavery,  the  administration  struck 
several  thumping  blows  upon  the  backs  of  the  slaves 
in  its  jealous  regard  for  the  rights  of  masters. 

"  Fugitive  slaves,"  so  ran  a  general  order  from 
Washington,  July  iyth;  "  Fugitive  slaves  will  under 
no  pretext  whatever  be  permitted  to  reside,  or  in 
any  way  be  harbored,  in  the  quarters  and  camps  of 
the  troops  serving  in  this  department.  Neither  will 
such  slaves  be  allowed  to  accompany  troops  on  the 
march.  Commanders  of  troops  will  be  held  respons 
ible  for  a  strict  observance  of  this  order."  Six  days 
afterward  the  administration,  through  Attorney-Gen 
eral  Bates,  reminded  the  United  States  marshals  of 
Missouri  that  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  must  be  exe 
cuted  !  And  to  General  Butler's  famous  suggestion, 
that  the  "  able-bodied  negroes,"  liable  to  be  used  in 
aid  of  rebellion,  were  contraband  of  war,  the  Secretary 
of  War,  Simon  Cameron,  replied,  in  August,  that,  "  It 
is  the  desire  of  the  President,  that  all  existing  rights 
in  all  the  States  be  fully  respected  and  maintained." 

August  3oth,  General  Fremont,  commanding  the 
Western  Department,  made  proclamation  that:  "The 
property,  real  and  personal,  of  all  persons  in  the 
State  of  Missouri,  who  shall  take  up  arms  against  the 
United  States,  or  who  shall  be  directly  proven  to 
have  taken  an  active  part  with  their  enemies  in  the 
field,  is  declared  to  be  confiscated  to  the  public  use, 
and  their  slaves,  if  any  they  have,  are  hereby  declared 
freemen''  Notwithstanding  the  outburst  of  popular 
satisfaction  with  which  this  last  clause  of  the  order 
was  received,  President  Lincoln  promptly  counter 
manded  it.  He  was  plainly  bent  on  saving  the  Union, 


33^  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

if  he  could,  without  in  any  manner  disturbing  the 
status  quo  of  invested  interests  in  the  slave  States. 

This  amazing  conservatism  was  unspeakably  pain 
ful  to  Sumner,  and  excited  his  keenest  apprehensions 
in  respect  of  its  demoralizing  consequences  in  the 
conduct  of  the  war.  It  was  injurious  to  the  cause  of 
the  Union  at  home  and  abroad.  It  operated  in  the 
South  to  strengthen,  not  weaken,  the  spirit  of  rebel 
lion.  Sumner,  unable  to  influence  the  President, 
turned  to  the  people.  Perhaps  they  could  show  the 
administration  the  error  of  its  way,  induce  it  to 
change  its  policy  of  forbearance  to  bold  and  active 
anti-slavery  measures.  As  early  as  July  he  endeav 
ored  to  get  Congress  to  inaugurate  a  new  and  mili 
tant  policy  in  the  treatment  of  rebels.  Two  bills 
introduced  by  him  into  the  Senate,  prior  to  the  bat 
tle  of  Bull  Run,  provided  for  the  confiscation  of  the 
property  of  traitors.  This  was  one  way,  certainly,  of 
starting  off  on  a  new  departure  in  the  conduct  of  the 
war. 

At  the  Republican  State  Convention  of  Massachu 
setts,  which  met  at  Worcester,  October  i,  1861,  he 
demonstrated  in  an  electric  speech,  that  emancipa 
tion  was  the  best  weapon  for  putting  down  the  Rebel 
lion  and  saving  the  Union.  "  It  is  not  necessary 
even,  borrowing  a  familiar  phrase,"  he  declared,  with 
singular  sagacity,  "to  carry  the  war  into  Africa.  It 
will  be  enough  if  we  carry  Africa  into  the  war  in  any 
form,  any  quantity,  any  way.  The  moment  this  is 
done,  Rebellion  will  begin  its  bad  luck,  and  the  Union 
become  secure  forever."  Facts,  a  year  later,  com 
pletely  verified  this  bold  prediction. 

On    the    evening   of   November    27th,    before    the 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  337 

Young  Men's  Republican  Union  of  New  York,  at 
Cooper  Institute,  he  pointed  out,  in  an  argument  of 
masterly  force,  that  slavery  was  the  origin  and 
mainspring  of  the  Rebellion:  "  Wherever  this  Rebel 
lion  shows  itself,  whatever  form  it  takes,  whatever 
thing  it  does,  whatever  it  meditates,"  exclaimed  the 
orator,  "  it  is  moved  by  slavery  ;  nay,  the  Rebellion 
is  slavery  itself,  incarnate,  living,  acting,  raging,  rob 
bing,  murdering,  according  to  the  essential  law  of 
its  being."  And  again:  "  The  slaves  toil  at  home, 
while  the  masters  work  at  rebellion  ;  and  thus,  by 
singular  fatality,  is  this  doomed  race,  without  taking 
up  arms,  actually  engaged  in  feeding,  supporting, 
succoring,  invigorating  those  battling  for  their 
enslavement.  Full  well  I  know  that  this  is  an  ele 
ment  of  strength  only  through  the  forbearance  of  our 
own  Government."  . 

And  coming  to  the  point  of  the  argument,  he  finds 
that  something  more  is  needed  to  encounter  success 
fully  the  Rebellion  than  men  and  money.  That 
decisive  something  which  the  war  for  the  Union 
wanted  was  ideas.  "  Our  battalions  must  be  rein 
forced  by  ideas,"  he  sums  up,  "  and  we  must  strike 
directly  at  the  origin  and  mainspring.  I  do  not  say 
now  in  what  way  or  to  what  extent,  but  only  that  we 
must  strike.  .  .  .  In  no  way  can  we  do  so  much 
at  so  little  cost.  To  the  enemy  such  a  blow  will  be 
a  terror,  to  good  men  it  will  be  an  encouragement, 
and  to  foreign  nations  watching  this  contest  it  will 
be  an  earnest  of  something  beyond  a  mere  carnival 
of  battle.  There  has  been  the  cry,  '  On  to  Rich 
mond!  '  and  still  another  worse  cry,  *  On  to  England!' 
Better  than  either  is  the  cry,  'On  to  Freedom!  '  Let 

22 


CHARLES    SUMNER. 

this  be  heard  in  the  voices  of  our  soldiers,  ay,  let  it 
resound  in  the  purposes  of  the  Government,  and  vic 
tory  must  be  near." 

No  opportunity  did  Sumner  now  miss  to  press 
upon  President,  Congress,  and  the  country  the  duty 
and  necessity  of  emancipation.  From  this  time  for 
ward  he  never  saw  Mr.  Lincoln  without  urging  him 
to  strike  the  great  criminal  without  warning  him 
that  then  was  the  accepted  time  for  dispatching  the 
monster.  But  Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  so  apprehend  the 
situation,  nor  the  urgency  of  immediate  action.  He 
would  wait  yet  a  while  longer.  He  was,  according 
to  his  own  calculation,  but  six  weeks  behind  Sumner. 
The  weeks,  however,  stretched  into  months,  and  still 
the  Presidential  arm  was  stayed. 

In  the  meantime,  Congress  was  not  inactive.  It 
took  the  initiative  in  the  military  movement  against 
slavery,  as  the  origin  and  mainspring  of  the  Rebel 
lion.  In  the  measure  to  confiscate  property  used  for 
insurrectionary  purposes,  slaves  so  employed  were 
declared  free  by  the  Act,  which,  on  its  approval  by 
the  President,  August  6,  1861,  was  the  beginning  of 
emancipation.  This  Act  was  followed  in  March,  1862, 
by  another,  which  prohibited  the  employment  of  the 
national  forces  in  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves.  It 
was  thus,  largely  through  the  earnestness  and  deter 
mination  of  Sumner,  that  a  path  was  hewed  for  the 
feet  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  emancipation  as  a  measure  of 
military  necessity. 

When  the  slavemasters  retired  from  the  Senate, 
and  the  Republican  party  obtained  control  of  that 
body,  Mr.  Sumner  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the 
Committee  on  Foreign  Relations.  In  this  position 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  339 

he  was  enabled  to  render  inestimable  services  to  the 
country,  and  to  the  cause  of  freedom  as  well.  His 
extensive  acquaintance  in  Europe,  and  his  immense 
acquisitions  as  a  student  of  history  and  of  interna 
tional  law  made  him  a  power,  at  home  and  abroad, 
daring  the  progress  of  the  war,  as  Chairman  of  that 
Committee.  His  speech  on  the  "  Trent  "  episode  was 
one  of  the  greatest  services  rendered  by  him  to  the 
administration  and  the  country  in  that  capacity. 

Two  of  Sumner's  old  enemies,  James  M.  Mason, 
the  former  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign 
Relations,  and  John  Slidell  of  Louisiana,  were  ap 
pointed  to  represent  the  rebel  States,  the  former  at 
the  Court  of  St.  James,  and  the  latter  at  the  Court  of 
Napoleon  III.  In  October,  1861,  with  their  two  sec 
retaries  they  eluded  the  blockade  at  Charleston  and 
were  landed  at  Havana.  From  this  place  they  took 
passage  in  the  British  mail  packet  "  Trent  "  for  St. 
Thomas,  where  a  line  of  steamers  connecting  with  the 
"  Trent  "  ran  to  England.  When  near  St.  Thomas  the 
'•  Trent "  was  stopped  by  the  United  States  steamer 
"San  Jacinto,"  commanded  by  Captain  Wilkes,  and 
the  rebel  commissioners  and  their  two  secretaries 
were  taken  into  custody  and  removed  to  the  national 
steamer.  This  proceeding  of  Captain  Wilkes,  though 
in  strict  accord  with  British  precedent,  was  in  viola 
tion  of  the  principle  in  that  regard  uniformly  con 
tended  for  by  America.  But  this  latter  fact  was  at 
first  quite  lost  sight  of  by  the  statesmen  and  diplo 
matic  scholars  and  lawyers  of  the  land.  The  capture 
gave  general  satisfaction  in  the  United  States — made 
Captain  Wilkes  the  hero  of  the  hour. 

In  England,  however,  the  act  excited  very  different 


340  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

emotions.  It  brought  the  hostility  of  that  country 
toward  the  United  States  to  a  head.  The  English 
Government  demanded  the  surrender  of  the  traitors, 
and,  in  case  of  the  refusal  of  the  American  Govern 
ment  to  comply  therewith,  instructed  its  minister  at 
Washington,  Lord  Lyons,  to  return  to  London  with 
the  entire  legation.  Pending  the  consideration  of 
this  demand  by  the  administration,  Great  Britain,  like 
the  wild  boar  in  the  fable,  began  industriously  to 
whet  its  tusks  for  a  war,  which  in  its  consequences 
must  have  proven  disastrous  to  the  cause  of  the  Union 
and  of  freedom  alike. 

Plainly,  under  the  circumstances,  there  was  but  one 
course  for  the  American  Government  to  pursue,  and 
that  was  to  throw  itself  back  upon  American  practice, 
rather  than  upon  British  precedent,  and  surrender 
the  prisoners.  And  this  it  did,  though  not  without 
embarrassment  in  view  of  the  popularity  of  the  cap 
ture  of  those  men,  and  of  the  deep  resentment  felt  by 
all  classes  against  the  demand  for  their  release.  If 
the  popular  feeling  was  warlike  in  England,  it  was 
equally  so  in  America.  The  Government,  in  getting 
rid  of  a  war  with  England,  could  ill  afford  to  do  so 
by  forfeiting  the  respect  and  confidence  of  its  own 
citizens,  whose  love  of  country  was,  without  doubt, 
sorely  wounded  by  what,  to  the  public  eye,  seemed 
like  an  ignominious  backdown  before  British  inso 
lence  and  menace. 

It  fell  to  the  lot  of  Sumner  to  rescue  the  adminis 
tration  from  this  predicament,  by  appeasing  the  irri 
tated  national  amour  propre,  which  he  achieved  in  a 
masterly  speech  before  the  Senate,  January  9,  1862, 
entitled  "  The  *  Trent  '  Case  and  Maritime  Rights." 


CATHAFO    EST    DELENDA.  341 

He  demonstrated  to  the  almost  universal  satisfaction 
of  the  country,  if  not  of  the  world,  that  the  surrender 
of  the  rebel  commissioners  was  not  a  backdown,  but 
that,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  in  strict  accord  with 
American  principle  and  practice  touching  the  right  of 
search  of  neutral  vessels  at  sea  by  belligerent  Powers. 
It  was  the  American  contention  that  these  Powers 
could  not,  in  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  search,  board 
neutral  vessels  at  sea,  and  take  out  of  them  persons 
on  whom  such  nations  might  otherwise  have  perfectly 
valid  claims.  This  grand  principle  was  now  estab 
lished  by  the  demand  of  England  and  the  act  of 
America.  America,  therefore,  had  no  cause  for  feel 
ing  humiliated  by  the  surrender  of  the  prisoners,  but 
rather  the  strongest  reason  for  experiencing  a  sense 
of  accomplishment  and  triumph.  To  her  other 
glories  she  had  added  the  glory  of  leading  the  way 
to  the  reformation  of  long-existing  abuses  and 
wrongs  in  the  law  of  nations.  If  America  had  sur 
rendered  the  rebels  to  England,  England  had  surely 
surrendered  a  bad  principle  and  the  support  of  many 
bad  precedents  to  America. 

The  speech  produced  a  profound  impression  at 
home  and  abroad.  The  London  Times  was  greatly 
chagrined  at  the  skillful  manner  in  which  the  ora 
tor  had  turned  the  surrender  to  the  advantage  of  the 
American  Government  and  of  the  American  people. 
"The  great  object  of  this  remarkable  oration," 
growled  a  famous  correspondent  of  the  Thunderer, 
"  is  to  prove  that  the  surrender  of  Messrs.  Slidell  and 
Mason  is  a  great  triumph  for  the  American  Govern 
ment.  There  is,  proverbially,  no  accounting  for 
taste;  and  if  the  American  people  are  of  Mr.  Sum- 


342  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ner's  opinion  I  do  not  see  why  we  should  complain  of 
their  contentment."  But  neither  the  Times  nor  its 
famous  correspondent  was  able  to  laugh  down,  or 
sneer  down,  or  argue  down  the  force  of  the  speech. 
Sumner,  with  his  customary  thoroughness,  had  done 
what  he  set  out  to  do,  vindicated  the  Government, 
established  for  it  in  the  popular  regard  a  fresh  claim 
to  the  confidence  and  support  of  the  loyal  North. 
And  this  was,  in  effect,  dealing  another  blow  upon 
the  head  of  slavery,  the  supreme  traitor,  the  origin 
and  mainspring  of  the  Rebellion. 

Sumner's  labors  for  the  recognition  of  the  inde 
pendence  of  the  black  republics,  Hayti  and  Liberia, 
by  the  United  States,  had  similar  results.  He  found 
the  spirit  of  slavery  intrenched  in  public  opinion  and 
the  laws  of  the  land,  and  it  was  his  purpose  to  strike 
it  there  as  well  as  at  the  South  in  its  chattel  form.  If 
dislodged  from  those  coigns  of  vantage  in  the  Re 
public,  if  disowned  by  public  opinion  and  expelled 
from  the  national  statutes,  he  believed  that  it  could 
be  the  more  readily  and  effectively  dealt  with  in  the 
rebellious  States.  A  move  for  the  recognition  of  the 
black  republics  was  a  move  against  the  many-headed 
wrong  of  slavery. 

Before  the  war  the  slave-power  refused  all  recog 
nition  of  Hayti  and  Liberia  as  members  of  the  family 
of  nations.  Nearly  a  year  after  the  opening  of  hos 
tilities,  President  Lincoln,  with  characteristic  caution, 
suggested  the  subject  to  Congress,  in  his  annual 
message.  Remarking  that,  "  If  any  good  reason 
exists  why  we  should  persevere  longer  in  withhold 
ing  our  recognition  of  the  independence  and  sover- 
eignity  of  Hayti  and  Liberia,  I  am  unable  to  discern 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  343 

it,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  that  he  is  unwilling  "  to  in 
augurate  a  novel  policy  in  regard  to  them  without 
the  approbation  of  Congress,"  and  thereupon  submits 
to  its  "consideration  the  expediency  of  an  appropri 
ation  for  maintaining  a  Charge  d'Affaires  in  each 
of  those  new  States."  This  was  enough  for  Sumner, 
who  immediately  took  the  matter  up  and  pursued  it 
with  such  zeal,  discretion,  and  perseverance,  that  in 
June  these  States  received  their  long-deferred  recog 
nition  at  the  hands  of  the  United  States. 

Governor  Andrew  felt  that  the  recognition  of 
Hayti  and  Liberia  was,  in  effect,  the  recognition  of 
the  colored  man  of  the  Union  as  well,  and  that  the 
passage  of  the  law  placed  a  fresh  jewel  in  Sumner's 
crown.  The  considerable  and  essential  service  of 
Sumner  toward  the  success  of  the  measure  found 
grateful  acknowledgement  and  appreciation  from 
the  two  countries.  The  Liberian  Commissioners, 
Alexander  Crummell,  Edward  W.  Blyden,  and  J.  D. 
Johnson,  who  were  at  the  time  in  Washington, 
promptly  expressed  the  sentiments  of  Liberia  to  Mr. 
Sumner.  "  Had  it  not  been  for  your  masterly  policy," 
they  wrote  him,  "and  your  wise  discretion,  allied  to 
a  most  persistent  determination,  we  have  reason  to 
doubt  whether  the  Bill  of  Recognition  would  not 
have  met  with  a  miscarriage  during  the  present  ses 
sion  of  Congress." 

The  objection  to  the  passage  of  the  Bill  of  Recog 
nition  by  Mr.  Saulsbury,  of  Delaware,  is  so  absolutely 
absurd,  so  incredibly  comic,  and  utterly  asinine,  that 
the  writer  begs  to  reproduce  it  as  a  curiosity  of  the 
ratiocination  of  a  slavemaster's  mind  in  senatorial 
debate.  "  It  is  evident,"  observed  the  acute  Mr. 


344  CHARLES    SUMNER. 


Saulsbury,  '  that  this  bill  is  going  to  pass.  I  want 
the  country,  however,  to  know  that,  according  to  the 
rules  of  the  Senate,  foreign  ministers  have  a  right 
upon  this  floor,  and  we  have  set  apart  a  portion  of 
the  gallery  for  the  ministers  and  their  families.  If 
this  bill  should  pass  both  Houses  of  Congress  and 
become  a  law,  I  predict  that  in  twelve  months,  some 
negro  will  walk  upon  the  floor  of  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States,  and  carry  his  family  into  that  gallery 
which  is  set  apart  for  foreign  ministers.  If  that  is 
agreeable  to  the  taste  and  feeling  of  the  people  of 
this  country,  it  is  not  to  mine;  and  I  only  say  that  I 
will  not  be  responsible  for  any  such  act.  With  this  I 
will  content  myself." 

The  final  suppression  of  the  slave-trade  by  treaty 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  was 
another  effective  blow  dealt  the  hydra  of  the  land, 
the  ratification  of  which  by  the  Senate  received  the 
powerful  aid  of  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Foreign  Relations.  The  ratification  of  a  treaty 
between  the  two  countries  giving  to  each  on  the 
coasts  of  Africa  and  America  a  restricted  right  of 
search  in  suspected  vessels  flying  the  national  colors 
of  the  other  was,  so  long  as  the  slave-power  dom 
inated  the  Senate,  a  thing  impossible  of  accomplish 
ment.  The  right  was  yielded  for  the  African  coast, 
but  persistently  withheld  for  the  American,  where  it 
was  notorious  that  slavers  prowled  with  their  African 
victims  for  the  Southern  market.  But  as  the  war 
waxed  a  new  spirit  arose  in  the  North  against  this 
inhuman  commerce.  A  Federal  law  had  denounced 
it  as  piracy  and  punishable  with  death.  But  while 
the  slave-power  ruled,  the  law  remained  on  the 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  345 

statute-book  a  dead  letter.  The  rising  hatred  of 
slavery  as  the  origin  and  mainspring  of  the  Rebellion 
which  was  spreading  through  the  North  galvanized 
on  February  21,  1862,  into  sudden  and  terrible  life 
the  dead  letter  of  that  law  in  the  execution  under  it 
at  New  York  of  Nathaniel  Gordon,  an  African  slave- 
trader.  The  treaty  for  the  final  suppression  of  the 
atrocious  traffic  passed  the  Senate  April  24,  1862. 

Eight  days  before  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  for 
the  suppression  of  the  African  slave-trade,  slavery 
was  abolished  by  law  in  the  District  of  Columbia. 
Sumner  sustained  a  principal  part  in  the  consumma 
tion  of  this  great  act.  He  was  pained  and  dis 
couraged  by  the  absence  from  the  annual  message  of 
the  President  of  any  proposition  or  discussion  touch 
ing  emancipation.  There  was  nothing  in  that  docu 
ment  to  indicate  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  considering 
the  subject  at  all.  On  the  contrary,  the  President 
had  told  him  of  a  circumstance  which  might  lead 
him  to  infer  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  still  opposed  to 
the  use  of  this  best  weapon  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
war  for  the  Union.  From  the  report  of  Simon 
Cameron,  then  Secretary  of  War,  the  President  had 
struck  a  strong  passage  in  relation  to  this  very 
matter.  But,  notwithstanding  these  unfavorable 
symptoms,  Sumner  began  to  feel  assured  that  the 
President  was  seriously  grappling  with  the  question. 

It  was  not  long  before  Sumner's  faith  in  the  Presi 
dent  was  happily  confirmed.  Early  on  the  morning 
of  March  6th,  he  was  summoned  to  meet  Mr.  Lincoln, 
who  read  to  him  the  draught  of  the  special  message 
of  that  date,  proposing  compensated  emancipation. 
Sumner,  who  was  never  inclined  to  attach  much 


346  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

value  to  the  schemes  for  compensated  emancipation, 
especially  on  a  large  scale,  was  too  thankful  for  this 
evidence  that  the  President  was  ready  to  move 
Abolitionward,  to  take  a  new  departure,  however 
slight,  from  the  old  policy  of  forbearance,  for  other 
than  cordial  words  of  welcome  for  the  message.  At 
his  instance  the  President  struck  a  doubtful  para 
graph  from  the  draught.  That  day  the  message  was 
communicated  to  the  Senate,  and  the  good  work,  as 
far  as  Mr.  Lincoln  was  concerned,  was  begun,  al 
though  no  practical  results  followed  this  particular 
act  of  his. 

The  principle  of  compensated  emancipation  on  a 
small  scale  had  been  embodied  in  a  bill,  introduced 
in  the  Senate  by  Henry  Wilson,  December  i6th,  for 
the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia. 
Sumner,  unwilling  to  indorse  the  principle  of  com 
pensated  emancipation  because  it  involved  recogni 
tion  of  right  of  property  in  persons,  treated  the 
measure  as  a  scheme  for  the  ransom  of  -the  slaves  at 
the  national  capital.  Rejecting  with  indignation  the 
"wild  and  guilty  fantasy  that  man  can  hold  prop 
erty  in  man,"  he  nevertheless  was  ready  to  help  to 
build  "  a  bridge  of  gold  "  for  the  banishment  of  the 
barbarism  of  slavery. 

fl  Amidst  all  present  solicitudes,"  were  the  fervid 
and  cheering  words  with  which  he  closed  his  able 
and  elaborate  argument  in  support  of  the  Bill  for 
Emancipation,  "amidst  all  present  solicitudes,  the 
future  cannot  be  doubtful.  At  the  national  capital 
slavery  will  give  way  to  freedom.  But  the  good 
work  will  not  stop  here  ;  it  must  proceed.  What 
God  and  Nature  decree  Rebellion  cannot  arrest.  And 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  347 

as  the  whole  widespread  tyranny  begins  to  tumble, 
then,  above  the  din  of  battle,  sounding  from  the  sea 
and  echoing  along  the  land,  above  even  the  exulta 
tions  of  victory  on  hard-fought  fields,  will  ascend 
voices  of  gladness,  wherever  civilization  bears  sway, 
to  commemorate  a  sacred  triumph,  whose  trophies, 
instead  of  tattered  banners,  are  ransomed  slaves." 
On  April  16,  1862,  the  District  Emancipation  Act 
received  the  approval  of  the  President.  It  was  free 
dom's  first  practical  victory  over  slavery  in  the  Gov 
ernment. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  true  to  his  character  for  going  slow 
where  any  disturbance  of  the  status  quo  of  the  invested 
interests  of  slavemasters  was  involved,  withheld  his 
approval  from  the  measure  five  days  after  it  passed 
the  House.  This  delay  of  the  President  gave  rise  to 
no  little  anxiety  on  the  part  of  the  supporters  of  the 
bill.  Among  these  anxious  friends  was  Mr.  Sumner, 
who,  during  this  painful  period,  called  on  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  expressed  the  astonishment  which  he  felt  that 
the  author  of  the  Special  Message  on  Compensated 
Emancipation  could  postpone  his  approval  of  the 
District  Emancipation  Act  a  single  night.  "  Do  you 
know  who  at  this  moment  is  the  largest  slaveholder 
in  this  country?"  Sumner  asked  the  great  man  with 
caustic  irony,  and,  without  waiting  for  reply,  an 
swered  thus:  "It  is  Abraham  Lincoln;  for  he  holds 
all  the  three  thousand  slaves  of  the  District,  which  is 
more  than  any  other  person  in  the  country  holds." 

But  if  Mr.  Lincoln  was  loth  to  meddle  with  the 
status  quo  of  slavery  in  the  Union,  not  so  was  Mr. 
Sumner  who  was  ever  in  motion  and  running  atilt, 
now  at  one,  now  at  another  of  the  many  heads  of  the 


CHARLES    SUMNER. 

colossal  evil.  Now,  it  was  against  the  incredible  mean 
ness  of  that  prescriptive  spirit  which  denied  to  the 
colored  citizens  going  abroad  the  passport  of  the 
Government,  or  which  refused  to  issue  patents  to 
inventors  on  account  of  color;  now  it  was  against 
those  twin  abominations  which  erected  a  man's  color 
into  a  legal  barrier  to  his  carrying  the  mails,  or  made 
it-  a  ground  for  excluding  his  testimony  in  judicial 
proceedings  held  under  the  Black  Code  of  the  District 
of  Columbia  and  of  the  slave  States,  "  wherein"  so 
runneth  the  black  letter  of  the  Black  Law,  "any  Chris 
tian  white  person  is  concerned" 

Sumner  began  his  efforts  for  the  annulment  of  this 
infamous  law,  while  the  District  Emancipation  Bill 
was  under  consideration  in  the  Senate.  Aware  that 
its  total  abolishment  would  not  be  immediately  ef 
fected,  he  moved  to  amend  the  Bill  by  the  addition  of 
a  provision  which  prohibited  "  the  exclusion  of  any  wit 
ness  on  account  of  color  "  in  proceedings  held  under  the 
Act.  This  was  the  thin  edge  of  the  movement  for 
the  civil  rights  of  colored  persons  in  the  United 
States,  the  first  step  taken  by  the  Government  to 
ward  equality  before  the  law. 

Having  obtained  so  much  for  his  colored  fellow- 
citizens,  Sumrier,  a  few  months  later,  made  a  second 
attempt  in  the  same  direction,  and  this  time  it  was  to 
extend  the  immunity  to  all  judicial  proceedings  in  the 
District.  The  second  attempt  proved  also  successful, 
and  equality  began  to  erect  its  benign  crest  over  the 
Black  Code  of  the  national  capital.  Sumner,  ever 
persistent  and  indefatigable,  made  a  third  attempt 
still  further  to  broaden  the  immunity,  by  extending 
the  operation  of  the  principle  of  non-exclusion  to  the 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  349 

Southern  States  in  judicial  proceedings  had  under 
the  Confiscation  and  Liberation  Act.  But  this  step 
was  farther  than  the  Senate  was  ready  to  go  at  that 
time.  And  so  Mr.  Sumner's  amendment  was  re 
jected.  Congress,  like  the  President,  was  singularly 
timid  in  inaugurating  any  novel  policy  in  that  regard, 
surprisingly  tender  of  the  rights  and  prejudices  of 
slavemasters  at  the  expense  of  the  slaves. 

Defeat  had  no  deterrent  effect  upon  a  mind  like 
Sumner's.  Failing  once,  he  tried  again  and  again 
until  he  succeeded.  Three  times  he  attempted  to  ex 
tend  the  principle  of  non-exclusion  and  equality  to 
the  proceedings  in  the  courts  of  the  United  States, 
before  he  was  enabled  to  carry  his  point.  In  the 
summer  of  1864  he  attached  his  proposition  to  the 
Sundry  Civil  Appropriation  Bill  as  an  amendment, 
and  thus  forced  its  consideration  upon  the  Senate. 
John  Sherman  "  trusted  that  after  the  experiences  of 
last  night  when  the  thermometer  here  rose  to  93° 
and  we  were  exhausted  by  debate  on  irrelevant  mat 
ter,  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  would  not  intro 
duce  upon  this  appropriation  bill  a  topic  of  this  kind." 
But  Mr.  Sherman's  protest  was  in  vain,  for  neither 
the  heat  of  the  evening  nor  the  disapproval  of  Sena 
tors  could  deter  Sumner  from  his  purpose  to  purge 
the  laws  of  the  Union  of  the  stain  of  slavery,  and  to 
redress  the  wrongs  of  an  oppressed  race. 

His  vigilance  and  persistency  secured  at  this  time 
a  double  triumph  for  freedom.  On  the  selfsame 
appropriation  bill  he  grafted  an  amendment  for  the 
abolition  of  the  coastwise  slave-trade.  In  no  other 
way  had  he  been  able  to  force  the  continued  exist 
ence  of  this  barbarism  upon  the  attention  of  tfr* 


350  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Senate.  Mr.  Sherman,  as  Chairman  of  the  Finance 
Committee,  deprecated  the  amendment,  not  because 
he  was  opposed  to  the  proposition,  but  that  he  wanted 
his  bill  kept  free  from  "disputed  extraneous  political 
questions."  But  Sumner  was  firm,  uncompromising, 
and  so  in  the  end  the  Senate,  and  not  he,  yielded,  and 
the  rider  passed  with  the  bill. 

Thomas  H.  Hendricks,  of  Indiana,  in  the  course  of 
a  speech  in  opposition  to  Sumner's  amendment  for 
the  abolition  of  the  coastwise  slave-trade  uttered 
the  following  significant  remarks  :  "  I  am  surprised 
that  any  Senator  should  oppose  the  proposition  of 
the  Senator  from  Massachusetts,  for  we  all  know  that 
eventually  it  will  be  adopted.  The  objection  as  to 
its  materiality  or  proper  connection  with  the  measure 
is  but  an  objection  of  time.  No  gentleman  can 
question  that  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  will 
eventually  carry  his  proposition.  Why,  then,  contest 
the  matter  longer?  It  may  as  well  come  now  as  at 
any  time."  The  fact  is,  Sumner  was  the  anti-slavery 
trail-finder  and  path-opener  for  the  Government. 
Where  he  made  a  way,  Congress  and  President  were, 
in  time,  sure  to  follow. 

His  earnestness  and  radicalism  were  not  always 
relished  by  the  administration  and  his  associates  in 
the  Government.  That,  however,  did  not  make  him 
less  so.  It  was  for  him  to  press  forward  himself,  and 
to  urge  forward  others  in  this  emergency,  whether 
they  chose  to  hear  and  heed  him  or  not.  He  had 
an  intolerant,  uncompromising  manner  toward  slav 
ery  and  toward 'anyone  who  sought  to  buttress  its 
barbarisms  with  the  authority  of  the  nation  whose 
life  it  was  seeking  to  destroy,  which  was  at  times,  no 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  351 

doubt,  a  sore  thorn  in  the  sides  of  the  cautious,  con 
ciliatory  President.  Edward  Stanley,  Provisional 
Governor  of  North  Carolina,  arouses  the  hot  indig 
nation  of  this  man  with  his  passionate  hatred  of 
slavery,  by  an  attempt  to  revive  the  Black  Code  of 
that  State  which  made  the  teaching  of  negroes  a 
criminal  offense.  When  Sumner  heard  of  this  shame 
ful  attempt,  he  hurried  to  lay  the  matter  before  Mr. 
Lincoln.  Not  finding  that  usually  placid  and  jocose 
magistrate  at  the  executive  mansion,  Sumner  fol 
lowed  him  to  the  War  Department.  There  he  laid 
his  case  before  Mr.  Stanley's  master.  But  Mr.  Stan 
ley's  master,  possibly  worn  out  with  the  Abolition 
badgering  with  which  he  was  treated  by  Mr.  Sumner 
whenever  they  met,  either  by  accident  or  appoint 
ment,  and,  possibly,  struck  also  by  the  apparent 
triviality  of  the  subject  and  the  inopportunity  of  the 
visit,  quite  lost  his  patience,  exclaiming  petulantly, 
"Do  you  take  me  for  a  school  committee-man?" 
"Not  at  all,"  Sumner  replied,  "  I  take  you  for  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States;  and  I  come  with  a  case  of 
wrong,  in  attending  to  which  your  predecessor, 
George  Washington,  if  alive,  might  add  to  his  re 
nown."  Such  earnestness  and  dignity  smoothed  the 
ruffled  temper  of  George  Washington's  worthy  suc 
cessor,  who,  thereupon,  with  perfect  kindliness  con 
sidered  the  case  with  his  friend. 

At  last,  after  nearly  two  years  of  terrible  conflict 
and  destruction  of  life  to  save  the  Union  with  slavery, 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  ready  to  try  the  other  horn  of  the 
dilemma  and  test  the  salvability  of  the  nation  with 
out  slavery.  To  this  end,  on  September  22,  1862,  he 
announced  his  purpose  to  grasp  Emancipation  as 


352  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

an  instrument  in  the  struggle.  On  that  date  he 
issued  his  preliminary  proclamation,  which  declared 
that  the  slaves  in  all  States  in  rebellion  on  January  i, 
1863,  should  be  thenceforward  and  forever  free. 

Directly  the  President  had  firmly  seized  Emanci 
pation  as  a  weapon  for  putting  down  the  Rebellion, 
Sumner  started  the  agitation  for  colored  troops. 
Two  weeks  after  the  preliminary  proclamation  was 
issued,  he  launched  from  the  platform  of  Faneuil 
Hall  the  proposition  to  turn  the  slaves  into  soldiers. 
He  pointed  to  Crispus  Attucks,  to  Peter  Salem,  and 
to  heroic  instances  during  the  war  for  the  Union,  as 
proof  positive  that  the  negroes  possessed  the  stuff 
out  of  which  good  fighters  were  formed.  Strike 
slavery,  the  origin  and  mainspring  of  rebellion,  with 
the  strong  arm  of  the  slave.  Destroy  the  Rebellion 
by  destroying  slavery  and  arming  the  blacks.  Eman 
cipation  and  colored  troops  are  the  powder  and  ball 
which  Providence  hath  rammed  into  the  cannon  of 
the  North.  Empty  the  Providential  broadside  into 
the  flanks  of  the  foe,  these  and  more  he  thundered  in 
the  ears  of  the  Government  and  the  country. 

Other  and  mightier  voices  were  thundering  for 
colored  troops  also,  passionate  voices  of  lamentation, 
of  frightful  reverses,  of  broken  and  flying  armies,  of 
baffled  friends  of  the  Union  whose  hearts  were  grow 
ing  sick  at  the  gloomy,  the  almost  hopeless,  outlook 
for  a  speedy  restoration  of  peace  to  a  bleeding  and 
distracted  land. 

As  early  as  July,  1862,  the  disastrous  fortunes  of  the 
Union  forces  were  constraining  the  Government,  in  its 
emergency,  to  make  use  of  all  the  means  which  the 
state  of  the  country  had  put  within  its  reach  for  the 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  353 

suppression  of  the  Rebellion.  Military  necessity  was 
plainly  demanding  that  the  services  of  the  blacks  in 
some  capacity  should  be  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the 
nation.  And  so  on  the  iyth  of  that  month  the  Presi 
dent  affixed  his  approval  to  a  bill  authorizing  him, 
"  to  receive  into  the  service  of  the  United  States,  for 
the  purpose  of  constructing  intrenchments  or  per 
forming  camp  service,  or  any  other  labor,  or  any  mil 
itary  or  naval  service  for  which  they  may  be  found 
competent,  persons  of  African  descent  ;  and  such 
persons  shall  be  enrolled  and  organized  under  such 
regulations,  not  inconsistent  with  the  Constitution 
and  laws,  as  the  President  may  prescribe."  This  was 
the  first  cautious  step  taken  toward  carrying  Africa 
into  the  war,  the  beginning,  in  fact,  of  colored 
troops. 

On  February  9,  1863,  Mr.  Sumner  introduced  in 
the  Senate  a  bill  for  the  enlistment  of  slaves  and 
other  persons  of  African  descent.  But  the  measure 
was  allowed  to  sleep  the  sleep  of  death  in  the  Military 
Committee  to  which  it  was  referred.  It  was  not 
until  a  year  afterward  that  the  subject  was  revived 
in  the  House  by  Thaddeus  Stevens,  when  the  employ 
ment  of  colored  troops  was  expressly  authorized. 

Colored  troops  were  employed,  however,  many 
months  before  the  tardy  enactment  of  this  law.  On 
January  26,  1863,  Secretary  Stanton  gave  permission 
to  Governor  Andrew  to  raise  a  colored  regiment. 
This  regiment,  the  afterwards  famous  Fifty-fourth, 
was  raised,  and  the  following  May  ordered  to  the 
seat  of  war  in  South  Carolina,  where,  under  its  gal 
lant  young  Colonel,  Robert  G.  Shaw,  it  demonstrated 
before  Fort  Wagner  that  the  blacks  had  the  stuff  of 
23 


354  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

true  soldiers  in  them.  Subsequently  Massachusetts 
sent  two  other  regiments  of  colored  soldiers  into  the 
field,  one  of  infantry  and  the  other  of  cavalry.  Their 
fighting  qualities  were  soon  established.  If  at  first 
the  employment  of  colored  troops  was  a  hard  riddle 
to  many  minds,  those  three  black  regiments  wrote 
the  glorious  answer  clear  and  large  for  the  nation  to 
read.  And  the  nation,  notwithstanding  its  pro-slav 
ery  goggles  which  minimized  and  distorted  every 
thing  connected  with  the  humanity  and  manhood 
rights  of  this  unfortunate  race,  was  not  so  blind  to  its 
own  emergent  needs  as  to  miss  the  point,  and 
immense  significance  of  the  lesson  writ  in  the 
blood  and  valor  of  its  colored  contingent. 

But,  though  the  North  was  not  in  these  circum 
stances  blind  to  its  own  dire  needs,  it  proved,  on 
almost  every  occasion  calling  for  justice  to  its  colored 
allies,  blind  enough  to  their  simplest  demands  for 
fair  and  equal  treatment.  There  is  something  incred 
ibly  mean  in  that  pro-slavery  spirit  which,  after  call 
ing  men  to  fight  and  die  to  preserve  the  life  of  the 
nation,  could  refuse  them  equal  pay  with  the  other 
soldiers  on  account  of  their  color.  Nevertheless,  of 
such  incredible  meanness  was  the  Government  cer 
tainly  guilty  toward  its  colored  troops. 

Keenly  did  Mr.  Sumner  feel  this  outrageous  dis 
crimination  against  his  wards.  Again  and  again  he 
attacked  it,  sought  repeatedly  to  place  the  black  sol 
diers  on  an  equality,  in  respect  of  pay  and  bounty, 
with  their  white  brothers  in  arms.  He  was  not  alone 
in  efforts  to  this  end.  Wilson  and  Fessenden  in  the 
Senate,  perceived  with  him  the  wrong  and  endeav 
ored  to  have  it  redressed,  but  not  with  the  moral 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  355 

earnestness  and  persistency  which  characterized  the 
endeavors  of  Sumner  in  that  regard. 

The  Fifty-fourth  and  the  Fifty-fifth  Massachusetts 
regiments  of  colored  troops  enlisted  with  the  under 
standing  that  there  was  to  be  no  discrimination 
against  them,  on  account  of  their  color.  But,  all  the 
same,  the  Government  paid  them  ten  dollars  a  month, 
where  it  paid  thirteen  to  the  privates  of  white  regi 
ments.  Massachusetts  tried  to  correct  this  injustice 
by  making  up  out  of  her  own  coffers  these  three  dol 
lars  to  the  men.  But  when  this  difference  was  sent 
to  be  paid  to  those  two  regiments  they  firmly 
declined  to  receive  the  money  lest  by  so  doing  they 
compromised  their  demand  for  equality  in  the  army. 

In  February  and  June  of  1864,  Mr.  Sumner  pressed 
this  subject  upon  the  attention  of  the  Senate,  arguing 
that  the  wrong  done  had  no  warrant  in  law  since 
those  regiments  did  not  enlist  under  the  Act  of  1862, 
which  contained  a  special  provision  with  reference  to 
African  troops,  but  under  that  of  1861,  which  con 
tained  no  such  provision,  and  authorized  enlistments 
for  three  years.  The  question  was  finally  settled, 
not  by  legislation,  but  through  the  interpretation  of 
the  statutes  by  the  law  department  of  the  Govern 
ment.  The  Attorney-General,  Mr.  Bates,  in  affirming 
the  equal  rights  of  colored  soldiers,  put  an  end  to 
this  odious  caste  distinction  in  the  national  service, 
and  constrained  the  Government  to  a  step  of  tardy 
justice. 

The  Government,  in  both  its  legislative  and  execu 
tive  branches,  manifested  from  first  to  last  an  ex 
traordinary  timidity  or  indisposition  to  advance  the 
interests  of  the  colored  race.  Fear  of  the  border 


35^  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

States  was,  probably,  responsible  for  much  of  this 
singular  conduct,  but  colorphobia  in  the  Govern 
ment  itself  played,  without  doubt,  an  important  part 
in  its  production.  The  records  of  those  years  are 
full  of  examples  of  this  character.  Here  is  an  in 
stance  in  point:  Henry  Wilson,  as  early  as  January, 
1864,  embodied  in  a  bill  to  promote  enlistments  a 
clause,  declaring  that  when  "  any  man  or  boy  of 
African  descent,  or  in  service  or  labor  in  any  State, 
under  its  laws,  should  be  mustered  into  the  military  or 
naval  service  of  the  United  States,  he  and  his  mother, 
wife,  and  children  shall  be  forever  free." 

This  perfectly  just  and  very  moderate  measure  re 
quired  a  year  and  a  month  before  its  friends  could 
secure  its  enactment  into  law.  "  Future  generations," 
exclaimed  Sumner,  in  his  closing  remarks  upon  the 
bill;  "Future  generations  will  read  with  amazement, 
that  a  great  people  when  national  life  was  assailed, 
hesitated  to  exercise  a  power  so  simple  and  benefi 
cent;  and  this  amazement  will  know  no  bounds,  as 
they  learn  that  Congress  higgled  for  months  on  a 
question,  whether  the  wives  and  children  of  our 
colored  soldiers  should  be  admitted  to  freedom." 

Slavery  died  hard.  Fugitive  slaves  were  hunted  in 
the  District  of  Columbia  even  after  the  passage  of 
the  District  Emancipation  Bill.  The  poor  fleeing 
creatures  were  returned  again  and  again  to  their 
owners  by  the  Union  armies.  These  acts  became  so 
frequent  and  general  that  Congress,  in  the  summer 
of  1862,  prohibited  military  and  naval  officers  from 
erecting  themselves  into  commissioners  for  the  re 
turn  of  fugitive  slaves  on  pain  of  being  dismissed 
from  the  service. 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  357 

In  February,  1864,  Mr.  Sumner  reported  from  the 
Committee  on  Slavery  and  Freedmen  a  bill  for  the 
repeal  of  all  Acts  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves. 
The  bill  he  accompanied  with  a  comprehensive  re 
port,  reviewing  the  history  and  influence  of  slavery 
in  the  Government  in  its  relation  to  these  acts,  and 
closing  with  a  demand  for  their  entire  and  instant 
repeal.  But,  notwithstanding  that  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation  had  been  issued  more  than  thirteen 
months  before,  and  that  the  Secretary  of  War  had 
more  than  a  year  previously  given  Governor  Andrew 
official  permission  to  raise  a  regiment  of  colored 
troops,  and  that  at  the  time  of  its  introduction  in  the 
Senate,  several  colored  regiments  were  in  the  field 
fighting  the  battles  of  the  country,  yet  the  history  of 
its  passage  through  Congress  was  another  repetition 
of  the  old,  shameful  story. 

That  the  repeal  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Acts  should 
be  bitterly  opposed  by  the  Democrats  was  not  at  all 
surprising,  but  we  confess  to  no  little  astonishment 
in  noticing  that  Senator  Sherman  obstructed  its  pas 
sage  through  the  Senate,  that  he  actually  sought  to 
emasculate  the  bill  by  an  amendment  which  saved 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  of  1793  in  full  force  on  the 
statute-book,  and  that  this  proposition  was  adopted 
and  grafted  on  the  bill  by  the  Senate.  Mr.  Foster, 
of  Connecticut,  on  April  20,  1864,  made  an  elaborate 
argument  in  vindication  of  the  Act  of  1793. 

With  Mr.  Sherman's  pro-slavery  amendment  grafted 
upon  his  bill,  Mr.  Sumner  wisely  refrained  from 
pressing  it  to  a  vote,  but  determined,  as  he  not  infre 
quently  did  in  similar  circumstances,  to  await  the 
action  of  the  House,  which  on  June  i3th  passed  a 


358  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

bill  repealing  all  the  Fugitive  Slave  Acts.  This 
measure  Mr.  Sumner  reported  in  the  Senate  and 
pressed  to  a  vote.  It  was  not  until  the  28th  of  June 
that  this  bill  became  a  law,  **.  e.,  more  than  five 
months  after  the  date  on  which  Mr.  Sumner  intro 
duced  the  proposition  in  the  Senate.  However, 
thanks  to  his  persistency,  Congress  had  at  last  made 
an  end  of  those  wicked  laws,  and  dealt  another  blow 
to  the  expiring  slave  hydra. 

"  The  main  proposition  ever  is  to  strike  slavery  when 
ever  you  can  hit  it,"  retorted  Sumner  to  John  Sher 
man  during  the  consideration  of  the  bill  to  liberate 
the  wives  and  children  of  colored  soldiers.  Mr. 
Sherman  had  moved  to  postpone  consideration  of  the 
measure  "  with  a  view  that  we  may  act  upon  the 
main  proposition,"  to  wit,  the  constitutional  amend- 
mentabolishing  slavery.  Sumner  was  certainly  not  less 
earnest  and  persistent  for  the  adoption  of  the  consti 
tutional  amendment  than  was  Mr.  Sherman.  But  he 
did  not  feel  that  because  the  joint  resolution  was  on 
its  passage  through  Congress  that  all  anti-slavery 
efforts  were  to  be  pretermitted  in  the  meantime. 
And,  without  doubt,  it  behooved  him,  who  was  bent 
on  the  death  of  slavery  as  no  other  member  of  the 
Government  was,  to  continue  without  cessation  the 
struggle  for  its  destruction.  For  the  joint  resolution 
was  more  than  a  year  on  its  way  through  both 
branches  of  Congress  ;  and  it  was  two  years  in  all 
from  its  introduction  to  the  final  ratification  of 
the  amendment  by  the  requisite  number  of  States 
and  proclamation  of  that  fact  by  Mr.  Seward,  the 
Secretary  of  State. 

Sumner   was    right    to    take    nothing    for  granted 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  359 

where  slavery  was  concerned,  to  regard  the  enact 
ment  of  no  measure,  however  just  and  expedient, 
which  involved  the  abolishment  of  the  curse  as  a 
foregone  conclusion.  He  was  strongly  and  sternly 
unwilling  to  commit  the  fate  of  the  slaves,  in  any 
degree,  to  the  chapter  of  accidents  and  chances.  He 
was  for  striking  the  fell  destroyer  of  the  freedom  of 
the  colored  race  and  of  the  peace  of  the  Union 
whenever  and  wherever  Congress  could  do  so.  And 
this  was  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  his 
main  proposition. 

The  final  breaking  down  of  caste  distinction  on  the 
street  cars  of  the  District  of  Columbia  was  achieved 
largely  through  his  active  and  persistent  hostility  to 
it.  In  hitting  it  he  knew  well  that  he  was  hitting 
one  of  the  many  heads  of  the  monster  wrong  of  the 
land.  And  it  was  characteristic  of  him  that  when  he 
began  to  operate  with  his  club  upon  one  of  those 
baleful  heads,  he  desisted  not  until  that  particular 
foe  of  freedom  was  subdued  and  beaten  to  the  earth. 
One  after  another  of  the  street-car  lines  of  the  capital 
he  attacked,  as  they  entered  the  Senate  to  obtain 
renewals  of  their  franchises,  with  his  invariable  amend 
ment  to  their  respective  bills  for  incorporations  : 

"Provided,  That  there  shall  be  no  regulation  excluding  any 
person  from  any  car  on  account  of  color." 

The  last  of  these  street  railway  companies  to  suc 
cumb  was  the  Washington  and  Georgetown  Com 
pany,  which  in  February,  1865,  surrendered  to  the 
genius  of  equality  before  the  law.  After  this  time  it 
was  illegal  for  any  street  railway  company  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  to  exclude  from  its  cars  any 
person  on  account  of  color.  But  even  then  Mr.  Sum- 


360  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

ner  did  not  put  aside  his  club,  and  well  that  he  did 
not.  For  the  fight  for  equality  on  the  cars  was  not 
yet  finished.  The  Washington  and  Georgetown 
Company  neglected  to  comply  promptly  with  the 
provisions  of  the  law,  by  keeping  up  the  discrimina 
tion  against  colored  persons  who  sought  to  enter  its 
cars.  When  this  illegal  action  was  brought  to  Mr. 
Sumner's  knowledge,  he  wrote  a  sharp  note  to  the 
president  of  the  company,  calling  his  attention  to 
the  failure  of  his  agents  to  obey  the  law,  and  serving 
notice  on  him  that,  unless  the  breach  was  mended,  he, 
Mr.  Stimner,  would  at  the  next  session  of  Congress 
move  the  forfeiture  of  the  charter  of  the  corporation. 
This  determined  front  brought  the  company  to  its 
senses,  and  consummated  the  final  opening  of  the 
street-cars  of  the  District  of  Columbia  to  all  persons, 
regardless  of  race  or  color. 

Slavery  is  dying  on  sea  and  land.  Rebellion  every 
where  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  South 
is  collapsing  under  the  tremendous  trip-hammering 
of  Grant,  Sherman,  and  the  Union  armies,  reinforced 
now  with  more  than  150,000  colored  soldiers.  Sher 
man  begins  his  masterly  march  to  the  sea.  Now 
Atlanta  falls  before  the  advances  of  his  resistless 
legions,  now  Savannah,  now  Charleston.  Now  Grant 
has  begun  those  incessant  and  mighty  blows,  which 
are  to  drive  the  rebels  from  Richmond,  to  beat  to 
pieces  the  proud  and  hitherto  invincible  army  of 
Northern  Virginia,  and  to  force  Lee  to  surrender. 
All  these  great  events  were  coming  to  pass  while 
slavery  lay  writhing  in  death  throes.  Terrible  in  life, 
it  was  appalling  in  death.  Its  last  act  was  worthy  of 
it,  that  act  which  added  the  assassination  of  a  Presi- 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  361 

dent  to  the  black  mountain  of  its  matchless  horrors 
and  iniquities. 

Lincoln  and  Sumner,  though  unlike,  were  never 
theless  the  best  of  friends.  No  more  faithful  sup 
porter  had  Mr.  Lincoln  than  was  Mr.  Sumner.  They, 
notwithstanding  frequent  differences,  were  cordially 
appreciative  of  the  virtues  of  each  other.  Sumner 
heartily  and  unwaveringly  urged  the  President's 
claims  to  renomination  and  reelection.  Others  of 
the  radical  and  anti-slavery  wing  of  the  Republican 
party  preferred  Chase,  but  close  friends  as  were 
Sumner  and  Chase,  the  former  never  disguised  his 
decided  preference  for  Mr.  Lincoln  as  his  own  suc 
cessor.  Lincoln  was  slow,  excessively  cautious  per 
haps,  yet  he  was  in  the  main  inclined  Abolitionward. 
At  any  rate  he  was  a  bird  in  the  hand,  while  all  other 
candidates  were  regarded  by  Sumner  as,  politically, 
so  many  birds  in  the  bush.  He  very  wisely  refused 
to  imperil  the  anti-slavery  accomplishments  and 
prospects  of  the  war  in  the  crisis  of  a  change  of 
administration. 

The  circumstances  of  his  last  conference  with  the 
President  are  infinitely  creditable  to  the  heads  and 
hearts  of  both.  In  June,  1864,  it  appears  that  the 
Smith  Brothers,  of  Boston,  were,  by  order  of  the  Navy 
Department,  charged  with  fraud  in  the  performance 
of  certain  contracts  with  that  Department.  They 
were  imprisoned  in  Fort  Warren,  and  bail  placed  at 
a  half  million  dollars.  The  trial  of  these  men  was 
held  before  a  military  tribunal,  which  sentenced 
them  to  t\vo  years'  imprisonment,  and  to  pay  a  fine 
of  twenty  thousand  dollars. 

Sumner  laid  the  case  of  the  convicted  men  before 


362  CHARLES    SUMMER. 

the  President,  and  appealed  to  him  to  revoke  the 
sentence  of  the  court.  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  was  evi 
dently  impressed  with  Mr.  Sumner's  representation 
of  the  facts,  requested  him  to  read  the  report  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  in  relation  to  the  case,  and  to 
give  an  opinion  of  the  same.  This  Sumner  did  at 
once,  and  prepared  for  the  President  a  written  opin 
ion  thereon.  As  soon  as  this  was  done  he  presented 
himself  at  the  executive  mansion.  It  was  late  in  the 
afternoon,  and  the  illustrious  object  of  his  visit  was 
on  the  point  of  entering  his  carriage  for  a  drive.  The 
President  suggested  that  the  transaction  be  put  off 
until  next  day.  But  Mr.  Sumner  replied  that  it  was 
a  case  which  did  not  admit  of  delay,  and  that  the 
President  ought  not  to  sleep  that  night  until  he  had 
considered  it. 

Touched  by  Mr.  Sumner's  earnestness,  Mr.  Lincoln 
made  an  appointment  with  him  for  eleven  o'clock 
that  evening.  At  that  hour,  and  through  a  thunder 
storm,  Mr.  Sumner  joined  the  President,  who  was 
promptly  on  hand  to  listen  to  the  opinion  which  he 
had  requested. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  reading  of  it,  Mr.  Lincoln 
said  that  he  would  write  his  opinion  at  once,  and  in 
vited  Mr.  Sumner  to  call  the  next  morning  to  hear  it, 
adding  defensively,  that  he  "  opened  shop  at  nine 
o'clock."  At  the  time  appointed  Mr.  Sumner  was  on 
hand,  and  read  with  satisfaction  the  President's  dis 
approval  of  the  judgment  and  sentence. 

While  Mr.  Sumner  was  making  an  abstract  of  the 
Presidential  indorsement,  Mr.  Lincoln  regaled  him 
with  passages  from  the  effusions  of  Petroleum  V. 
Nasby.  The  reading  was  diversified  with  a  running 


CATHAGO    EST    DELENDA.  363 

commentary  from  the  reader.  "  For  the  genius  to 
write  these  things  I  would  gladly  give  up  my  office," 
he  repeated  enthusiastically  to  Mr.  Sumner,  as  the 
message  which  he  had  sent  the  author.  This  singular 
entertainment  lasted  about  half  an  hour.  It  was  the 
last  time  that  these  two  great  men  met  for  the  trans 
action  of  public  business.  For  on  March  23,  1865, 
the  President  left  Washington  to  join  General  Grant 
at  City  Point,  where  he  remained  until  after  the  fall 
of  Richmond.  He  returned  to  Washington  April 
9th,  and  on  the  following  Friday  evening,  April  i4th, 
was  shot  by  J.  Wilkes  Booth,  and  died  early  the  next 
morning. 

No  more  generous  and  glowing  tribute  was  pro 
nounced  over  the  grave  of  the  illustrious  martyr  to 
Liberty  and  Union  than  was  Sumner's  eulogy  before 
the  municipal  authorities  of  the  city  of  Boston,  June 
i,  1865.  True  to  his  habit  of  ending  no  speech  unless 
in  some  way  it  demanded  the  destruction  of  slavery, 
the  orator  did  not  allow  such  an  imposing  occasion 
to  pass  without  calling  for  the  total  annihilation  of 
the  accursed  thing,  with  its  vast  spider-like  web  of 
caste  and  inequality.  The  permanent  supremacy  in 
the  Republic  of  the  ideas  for  which  the  North  had 
fought,  depended,  he  solemnly  declared,  above  the 
grave  of  the  great  statesman  who  had  met  martyrdom 
for  those  ideas,  upon  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  to 
the  colored  men  of  the  South.  Indemnity  for  the  past, 
and  security  for  the  future  was  the  one  cue  which  he 
had  chosen  to  guide  his  feet  through  the  mazes  of 
of  reconstruction  of  the  rebellious  States. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE. 

AT  the  close  of  the  war  the  gravest  of  problems 
remained  to  be  solved.  The  riddle  of  the  slave 
sphinx  still  awaited  its  Oedipus.  How  should  local 
self-government  be  reconstituted  in  the  old  slave 
States  was  the  momentous  question  then  to  be  set 
tled.  Sumner  had  his  plan,  others  theirs.  His  he 
erected  on  the  simple  basis  of  equality.  No  mere 
party  considerations  entered  into  its  straightforward 
intention.  He  was  not  careful  to  enfold  within  his 
scheme  any  principle  or  device  looking  to  the  politi 
cal  supremacy  of  his  section  as  a  section.  It  was 
freedom  which  he  was  ever  and  solely  solicitous  of 
establishing,  the  supremacy  of  democratic  ideas  and 
institutions  of  securing  and  assuring  forever  to  the 
new-born  nation.  He  desired  and  strove  for  the 
ascendency  of  his  section  and  party  so  far  only  as 
they  were  the  actual  custodians  of  national  justice 
and  progress,  the  real  possessors  of  the  great  and 
quickening  principles  of  human  rights  enumerated  in 
the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

Long  before  the  end  of  the  Rebellion  Sumner's 
mind  had  begun  to  grapple  with  this  problem.  As 
early  as  February  n,  1862,  he  broached  the  subject 
in  the  Senate  in  a  series  of  resolutions  touching  the 
constitutional  status  of  the  rebellious  States,  and  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   365 

duty  of  Congress  in  regard  to  their  government  and 
reconstruction.  "  State  rebellion  is  State  suicide," 
was  the  pivotal  proposition  of  the  resolution.  With 
the  termination  of  Statehood  slavery  terminated  also, 
since  it  derived  its  existence  solely  and  exclusively 
from  the  authority  of  the  State.  By  reason  of  their 
insurrection  against  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  the  Southern  States  had  reverted  to  a  Territo 
rial  condition,  and,  like  all  national  territory,  their 
government  devolved  upon  the  United  States. 

It  was,  therefore,  the  duty  of  Congress  to.."  assume 
complete  jurisdiction  of  such  vacated  territory,  where 
such  unconstitutional  and  illegal  things  have  been 
attempted,  and  proceed  to  establish  therein  repub 
lican  forms  of  government  under  the  Constitu 
tion,  and  in  the  execution  of  this  trust  provide 
carefully  for  the  protection  of  all  the  inhabitants 
thereof,  for  the  security  of  families,  the  organization 
of  labor,  the  encouragement  of  industry,  and  the 
welfare  of  society,  and  in  every  way  discharge  the 
duties  of  a  just,  merciful,  and  paternal  Government." 

Such  was  the  radical  and  comprehensive  scheme 
for  Southern  reconstruction  presented  thus  early  by 
Sumner.  Its  introduction  produced  quite  a  flurry 
of  feeling  in  the  Senate  and  the  country  at  large. 
Republican  leaders,  like  Fessenden,  Sherman,  Doo- 
little,  and  others,  promptly  disowned  it  as  the  policy 
of  the  party.  They  were  not  mistaken  in  so  doing, 
for  the  Republican  party  at  that  time  had  not  so 
much  as  dreamed,  in  the  brain  of  any  other  man 
than  Sumner's,  of  a  plan  at  once  so  bold  and  radical 
for  the  reconstruction  of  the  rebellious  States.  Four 
years  later,  however,  these  very  leaders  and  the 


366  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

great  body  of  the  Republican  party  had  caught  up 
with  Sumner  on  this  question,  and  occupied  then 
substantially  the  position  taken  by  him  in  those 
famous  propositions. 

These  propositions  he  elaborated  and  defended  in 
an  article,  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for 
October,  1863,  and  entitled  "  Our  Domestic  Rela 
tions,"  which  the  paper  contended  hinged  upon  one 
question,  viz.:  How  to  treat  the  rebel  States.  State 
suicide  and  the  reversion  to  territorial  conditions  of 
States  in  insurrection  against  the  supremacy  of  the 
Constitution,  which  was  the  keynote  and  the  key 
stone  of  the  article,  ran,  without  doubt,  entirely 
counter  to  the  constitutional  fiction  of  once  a  State 
always  a  State  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  policy 
of  the  administration  in  the  conduct  of  the  war.  So 
totally  distinct  was  Sumner's  idea  from  that  which 
had  officially  obtained  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war, 
that  Montgomery  Blair,  a  member  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
cabinet,  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  take  issue 
with  the  article  and  to  point  out  that  its  author  had 
directly  arrayed  himself  against  the  President  on  a 
question  of  fundamental  policy  in  .the  conduct  of 
the  war. 

The  tremendous  struggle  in  which  the  nation  was 
engaged  for  its  life  attracted  the  entire  attention, 
absorbed  the  utmost  energies  which  could  be  put 
forth  of  Government  and  people.  There  was  neither 
time  nor  disposition,  under  these  circumstances,  to 
consider  less  imperious  questions.  Catch  your  fish 
and  do  your  frying  afterwards.  Conquer  the  rebel 
lious  States,  then  determine  how  they  shall  be 
treated,  was  the  unconscious  policy  pursued  by  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.    367 

Government  until  near  the  close  of  the  war.  Even 
Sumner,  forehanded  as  he  always  was  where  freedom 
was  concerned,  was  silent  on  the  subject  of  recon 
struction  after  the  publication  of  his  Atlantic  Monthly 
article  until  the  spring  of  1864,  when  the  Senate 
having  under  consideration  the  credentials  of  certain 
claimants  as  Senators  from  Arkansas,  he  introduced 
a  resolution  declaratory  of  the  necessity  of  the  vote 
of  both  Houses  of  Congress  for  the  readmission  of 
rebel  States  into  the  Union. 

And  a  little  later,  on  June  i3th,  in  fact,  when 
the  Senate  was  discussing  a  joint  resolution  for  the 
recognition  of  the  free  State  government  of  Ar 
kansas,  he  spoke  with  almost  unwonted  earnestness, 
urging  the  importance  of  making  haste  slowly  in 
that  direction,  as  well  as  the  duty  of  securing  from 
the  rebel  States,  what  he  described  as  "  irreversible 
guaranties,"  as  a  condition  precedent  to  their  re- 
admission  into  the  Union  which  they  had  attempted 
to  destroy. 

The  question  raised  by  the  joint  resolution 
seemed  to  him  the  gravest  presented  for  decision 
since  it  was  determined  to  meet  the  Rebellion  by 
arms  ;  and  he  opposed  the  admission  of  Arkansas,  at 
that  time  and  under  then  existing  circumstances,  as 
"improper,  unreasonable,  and  dangerous."  "The 
readmission  of  a  rebel  State,"  he  declared,  "  is  not 
less  important  than  its  original  admission  into  the 
Union." 

"  It  is  not  enough,"  he  argued,  "if  we  comply  with 
certain  forms  as  constitute  a  State  in  name  only. 
Much  more  must  be  done,  and  all  this  must  be 
placed  under  fixed  and  irreversible  guaranties.  Vain 


368  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

is  victory  on  the  field  if  these  guaranties  are  not 
obtained."  But  the  Senate  was  not  yet  ready  to 
grapple  with  the  problem  mooted  by  Mr.  Sumner. 
The  resolution  for  the  admission  of  Arkansas,  and 
that  of  Sumner  defining  one  of  the  conditions  of  re 
construction,  on  reference  to  the  Judiciary  Commit 
tee,  were  reported  upon  adversely  by  that  Committee, 
which  had  the  effect,  for  the  nonce,  to  push  out  of 
the  Senate  the  whole  subject  of  Southern  reconstruc 
tion. 

With  the  sweeping  successes  which  were  attending 
the  Union  armies  in  the  field,  and  the  probable  cer 
tainty  of  the  speedy  collapse  of  the  Rebellion,  the  sub 
ject  of  rebel  reconstruction  began  to  attract  the  notice 
of  others  in  Congress  than  Mr.  Sumner.  As  early  as 
February  15,  1864,  Henry  Winter  Davis,  of  Maryland, 
reported  a  bill  in  the  House  to  guarantee  to  certain 
States,  "  whose  governments  have  been  usurped  or 
overthrown,"  a  republican  form  of  government.  This 
bill  among  others  provided  for  the  assembling  of 
constitutional  conventions,  chosen  by  "  loyal  white 
male  citizens." 

In  the  Senate  the  principle  of  colored  suffrage  as 
an  element  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  rebel  States 
was  proposed  for  the  first  time  by  an  amendment  to 
the  Davis  Bill,  extending  the  basis  on  which  the 
constitutional  conventions  were  to  be  chosen  so  as 
to  include  the  Freedmen.  But  the  Senate  by  a  vote 
of  five  to  twenty-four  rejected  the  novel  and  revolu 
tionary  proposition.  Clearly  the  idea  of  colored 
suffrage  had  not  then  found  a  foothold,  certainly  not 
more  than  a  foothold,  in  the  Republican  party.  The 
House  Bill  was  finally  passed  by  the  Senate,  but,  even 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   369 

without  the  new  radicalism  of  suffrage  for  the  South 
ern  negroes,  it  failed  to  meet  the  approval  of  the 
President.  And  so  came  to  naught  another  attempt 
to  formulate  a  scheme  for  the  reconstruction  of  the 
South. 

The  principle  of  colored  suffrage  the  Senate  had 
twice  before  voted  down,  first,  in  the  case  of  the  Ter 
ritory  of  Montana,  when  a  bill  organizing  for  it  tem 
porary  Territorial  government,  was  under  considera 
tion;  and,  second,  in  the  case  of  the  city  of  Washing 
ton,  when  a  bill  to  amend  its  charter  was  on  its 
passage  through  that  body.  In  both  instances  it  was 
attempted,  without  avail,  to  extend  the  elective  fran 
chise  to  colored  men,  inhabitants  of  the  Territory  and 
the  city  respectively.  Sumner  strove  strenuously  on 
each  occasion  against  the  non-exclusion  of  colored 
citizens  from  the  register. 

About  the  beginning  of  1865,  the  subject  of  recon 
struction  had  made  considerable  progress  upon  the 
attention  of  statesmen.  The  case  of  Louisiana 
served  still  further  to  advance  the  question  in  that 
regard.  On  February  i8th,  Mr.  Trumbull  reported 
in  the  Senate  a  joint  resolution  recognizing  the  gov 
ernment  of  that  State,  inaugurated  by  a  convention 
held  at  New  Orleans,  April  6,  1864,  as  the  legitimate 
State  government.  There  was  no  provision  in  the 
new  order  thus  instituted,  which  extended  the  right 
to  vote  to  the  negroes.  The  State,  therefore,  was  to 
remain  in  the  hands  of  the  very  people  who  voted 
four  years  before  to  take  it  out  of  the  Union.  The 
danger  to  freedom,  to  the  Northern  idea  which  the 
war  was  establishing  at  an  expenditure  of  so  much 
blood  and  treasure  seemed  to  Sumner  extreme  in 
24 


370  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

view  of  the  possibilities  of  a  return   of  the   South   to 
power,  opened  by  the  Louisiana  Bill. 

The  readmission  of  Louisiana  was  a  pet  enterprise 
of  President  Lincoln.  He  had  set  his  heart  on  inau 
gurating  his  experimental  policy  for  the  reconstruc 
tion  of  the  rebellious  States  with  the  restoration  of 
this  one  to  its  old  place  m  the  Union.  The  joint 
resolution  was  accordingly  pressed  upon  the  atten 
tion  of  the  Senate,  and  a  vote  insisted  upon.  But  no 
vote  could  its  friends  obtain,  owing  largely  to  the 
firm  and  vigilant  opposition  of  Sumner,  and  to  his 
parliamentary  skill  in  the  contest,  which  continued 
several  days  before  a  postponement  of  the  subject 
was  secured.  Another  attempt  to  reconstruct  the 
South  thus  came  to  naught.  If  the  Republican  party 
was  not  then  at  all  disposed  to  adopt  Sumner's  plan, 
it  was  not  altogether  willing  to  swallow  the  Presi 
dent's,  for  the  constitutional  rehabilitation  of  the 
slave  States. 

The  struggle  over  the  Louisiana  Bill  developed  the 
fact,  that  at  that  date  the  Republican  party  was  not 
in  favor  of  adopting  colored  suffrage  as  a  condition 
of  reconstruction,  nor  was  it  included  in  the  Presi 
dent's  scheme.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  an  open 
secret  that  Mr.  Lincoln  took  the  failure  of  the  joint 
resolution  to  pass  the  Senate  quite  to  heart.  He  was 
sorely  disappointed  and  chagrined,  so  much  so,  in 
deed,  that  it  was  thought  Mr.  Sumner's  responsibility 
for  the  failure  would  cause  a  breach  between  him 
and  the  President.  But  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  politician 
of  too  much  calculation  and  tact  to  allow  the  occur 
rence,  however  unpleasant,  to  interrupt  the  intimate 
personal  and  political  relations  which  existed  be- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   371 

t\veen  himself  and  so  powerful  a  leader.  Accord 
ingly,  on  the  evening  of  March  5th,  he  promptly 
stopped  the  wagging  tongue  of  Madame  Rumor  by 
inviting  Sumner  to  accompany  him  to  the  inau 
gural  ball,  where  the  two  statesmen  appeared  before 
the  public  on  the  old  friendly  footing. 

Had  the  wise  and  tactful  Lincoln  remained  at  the 
helm  during  his  second  term,  it  is  impossible  to  say 
how  far  he  might  have  been  able  to  control  the  re 
construction  policy  of  his  party.  That  he  would 
have  exerted  a  distinct  influence  in  shaping  its  char 
acter  seems  not  at  all  improbable.  But  his  death  put 
a  man  in  his  place,  as  lacking  in  his  great  qualities 
of  mind  and  heart  as  it  was  possible  for  destiny  to 
pick  up  wherewith  to  present  a  Presidential  contrast. 
It  is  hard  to  understand  why  Lincoln  was  taken  and 
Johnson  left.  But  as  there  are  no  accidents  in  the 
universe,  Andrew  Johnson,  therefore,  could  not  have 
been  an  accident.  We  must  believe  that  his  acces 
sion  to  the  Presidency,  at  the  time  and  under  the  cir 
cumstances,  was  one  of  those  historic  occurrences 
through  which  an  "  increasing  purpose  runs." 

About  a  week  after  the  death  of  his  great  predeces 
sor,  Chief  Justice  Chase  and  Mr.  Sumner  called  in 
company  on  the  new  head  of  the  nation,  to  learn 
something  of  his  intentions  with  regard  to  the  recon 
struction  of  the  rebel  States,  and  to  urge  him  to  espouse 
the  cause  of  equal  rights  for  the  colored  race.  Mr. 
Sumner  fancied  that  the  President  seemed  impressed. 
A  few  days  later,  Sumner,  who  was  full  of  uneasiness 
and  apprehension  as  to  the  President's  course  toward 
the  South,  called  again  on  Mr.  Johnson,  and  had  a  sec 
ond  conversation  with  him  on  matters  discussed  dur- 


372  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

ing  the  first  visit.  It  is  possible  that  Sumner  and  the 
Chief  Justice  did  all  the  talking  at  that  time,  and 
that  Sumner,  who  was  alone  at  the  second  call,  talked 
the  whole  time  then  also  to  the  willing  exclusion  of 
the  President.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Sumner  went  away 
believing  that  he  had  received  from  the  strange  man 
positive  assurances  of  agreement  on  the  colored-suf 
frage  question. 

To  Mr.  Sumner's  appeal  to  him  to  use  the  power 
and  influence  of  his  great  office  toward  carrying  into 
the  new_political  order,  then  soon  to  be  established  in 
the  South,  the  principles  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  Mr.  Johnson  replied:  "  On  this  question, 
Mr.  Sumner,  there  is  no  difference  between  us;  you 
and  I  are  alike."  Sumner  went  away  deceived  in  the 
purpo-,2  of  the  President.  It  is  possible  that  Mr. 
Johnson  was  no  less  deceived  in  his  own  purpose. 
His  visitor  and  himself  forgot,  perhaps,  in  the  glow 
of  Sumner's  earnestness  and  eloquence,  that,  after  all, 
he,  Andrew  Johnson,  President  of  the  United  States, 
was  a  Southern  man,  with  the  traditions,  the  preju 
dices,  the  mental  and  moral  limitations  of  his  section, 
from  the  slavery  of  which  no  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion  was  able  to  liberate  his  mind,  free  him  for  one 
moment,  as  a  voluntary  and  thinking  being,  and  ex- 
slaveholder. 

It  was  natural  enough  that  such  a  man  should  ap 
proach  the  Southern  problem  from  the  standpoint  of 
his  section  rather  than  from  that  of  the  North,  and 
that  he  should  attempt  to  reorganize  civil  society  in 
the  old  slave  States  in  the  interest  of  the  old  masters 
rat'icr  than  of  the  freedmen.  Such  an  attempt,  how 
ever,  at  the  time  was  utterly  impracticable — could  not 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   373 

possibly  succeed.  No  reconstruction  of  the  seceded 
States  had  the  slightest  chance  of  adoption  as  the 
national  policy  in  that  regard,  which  proceeded  upon 
the  absurd  assumption  that  the  victorious  North  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  business.  But  unfortunately 
such  was  the  character  of  President  Johnson's  recon 
struction  policy. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  old  slavemasters,  in  the 
sun  of  this  extraordinary  policy,  undertook  to  frame 
constitutions  and  establish  governments  upon  a  cor 
responding  assumption  that  their  former  slaves  had 
no  rights  which  Southern  white  men  were  bound  to 
respect.  When  the  work  of  framing  the  new  consti 
tutions  and  laws  was  finished,  it  was  plain  to  the 
dullest  comprehension  that  the  freedmen  were  as 
completely  serfs  under  the  new  order  as  they  had 
been  slaves  under  the  old  one  Nothing  was  changed 
except  a  name.  The  old  wrong  lived  on,  vital  in 
every  part.  If  African  serfdom  was  now  to  take  the 
place  of  African  slavery,  was  the  serf-power  to  ascend 
the  throne  of  the  slave-power  also?  What,  then,  had 
the  war  settled  ?  What  had  the  expenditure  of  the 
blood  and  treasure  of  the  North  effected,  if  instead 
of  Southern  slaves  the  nation  was  to  be  cursed  with 
Southern  serfs,  if  in  room  of  the  rule  of  slavemasters 
there  was  to  succeed  the  reign  of  serf-masters  ?  Like 
fire  these  passionate  questionings  ran  through  the 
North.  The  conflagration  which  ensued  consumed  to 
ashes  this  first  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  rebel 
States.  But  we  are  anticipating. 

Congress  had  adjourned,  and  Sumner  had  gone 
home  under  the  glad  impression  that  the  anti-slavery 
work  of  his  life  was  ended,  when  the  President  began 


374  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

his  reconstruction  performance,  which,  as  It  pro 
gressed  from  one  reactionary  step  to  another,  excited 
through  the  North  astonishment  and  consternation, 
accompanied  by  a  rapidly  increasing  storm  of  protest 
and  indignation. 

Northern  alarm  and  Northern  demand  found  voice 
in  a  speech  made  by  Sumner  before  the  Republican 
State  Convention  of  Massachusetts,  held  at  Wor 
cester,  September  14,  1865.  Sumner,  in  view  of  the 
grave  emergency  which  the  President's  Southern 
policy  had  precipitated  upon  the  country,  was  chosen 
to  preside  at  this  convention.  To  him  all  the  friends 
of  freedom  turned  in  the  new  crisis  for  instruction 
and  inspiration,  and  from  such  a  platform  his  words 
were  sure  to  go  to  the  ends  of  the  North.  Without 
expressly  taking  issue  with  the  President,  for  Sumner 
and  others  still  clung  to  the  delusion  that  Andrew 
Johnson  might  be  made  to  see  the  error  of  his  way, 
and  be  induced  to  take  a  fresh  departure  in  unison 
with  Northern  sentiment  and  purpose  on  the  re 
construction  problem,  and  were,  therefore,  somewhat 
mindful  not  to  launch  into  hasty  opposition  to  the 
official  head  of  their  party,  the  Worcester  address, 
nevertheless,  sounded  the  keynote  of  the  Republican 
reconstruction  policy  with  no  uncertainty  of  mean 
ing- 
Justice  and  protection  was  its  watchward.  Justice 
to  the  freedmen;  protection  for  the  North.  They 
were  intimately  linked,  the  one  with  the  other. 
Security  for  the  future  sliould  be  the  corner-stone 
and  keystone  of  the  reconstructed  Union.  Defeated 
in  war,  the  South  designed  now  to  retrieve  its  broken 
fortunes  by  a  resort  to  fraud  and  cunning  in  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.    375 

restored  Union.  The  abolition  of  slavery  it  was 
scheming  to  nullify  by  substituting  for  it  the  old 
wrong  under  a  new  name.  The  freedmen  were  to  be 
chained  to  the  soil,  reduced  to  serfdom,  while  the 
rebel  States  were  to  return  to  their  old  places  in  the 
Union,  in  consequence,  stronger  in  federal  numbers 
than  when  they  seceded,  to  set  up  a  slave-empire. 
This  enlarged  representation,  conspiring  with  the 
Copperhead  party  of  the  North,  would  presently 
reestablish  Southern  domination  in  the  Republic. 

This  well  achieved,  the  new  serf-masters  would 
proceed  with  the  execution  of  their  monstrous  pro 
gramme  which  included  a  repudiation  of  the  national 
debt  or  else  an  intention  to  fasten  upon  its  payment, 
as  a  condition,  the  payment  of  the  rebel  debt,  also 
compensation  for  the  emancipated  slaves,  and  the 
pensioning  of  rebel  soldiers  equally  with  loyal  ones. 
Safeguards,  irreversible  guaranties,  security  for  the 
future  against  these  perils  must  be  demanded  and 
insisted  upon  by  the  Republican  party,  speaking  and 
acting  for  the  victorious  North. 

Irreversible  guaranties  could  not  be  obtained  by 
haste,  by  executive  action,  by  yielding  to  the  prej 
udice  of  color,  by  oaths,  or  pardons.  How  then  may 
they  be  obtained  ?  (i)  Time  is  necessary  ;  (2)  rebels 
must  be  excluded  from  political  power  ;  (3)  a  hand 
of  iron  in  a  velvet  glove  is  required  in  dealing  with 
the  leaders  of  the  Rebellion  ;  (4)  the  North  must 
turn  to  constant  loyalists  in  the  South,  regardless  of 
race  or  color;  (5)  it  must  look  to  Congress  which 
has  plenary  powers  over  the  whole  subject  ;  and, 
finally,  all  of  the  guaranties  thus  obtained  must  be 
completed  and  crowned  by  an  amendment  of  the 


376  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Constitution  expressly  providing  that  hereafter  there 
shall  be  no  denial  of  the  elective  franchise  or  any 
exclusion  of  any  kind  on  account  of  race  or  color, 
but  all  persons  shall  be  equal  before  the  law. 

Thus  spoke  Sumner  to  Massachusetts,  who  in  turn 
took  up  the  stern,  deep  note  and  sent  it  pealing 
through  the  North,  and  in  the  ears  of  the  President. 
But  all  heedless  of  the  rising  storm,  Andrew  Johnson 
bent  himself  stubbornly  upon  his  obnoxious  course. 
In  November  Sumner  remonstrated  by  telegraph 
with  him.  They  were  words  thrown  away.  Re 
publican  remonstrance  and  protest  exerted  not  the 
slightest  effect  upon  the  conduct  of  the  President, 
who,  metaphorically,  had  taken  the  political  bit 
between  his  official  teeth,  and,  regardless  of  the 
frantic  outcries  of  the  North,  was  dashing  willfully 
and  viciously  with  the  results  of  the  war  toward  an 
overturn  where  all  would  be  lost. 

The  Republican  party  was  almost  stupefied  with 
fright.  Thaddeus  Stevens,  who  had  not  yet  adopted 
colored  suffrage  as  a  condition  of  reconstruction,  was 
almost  in  despair,  lest  the  North  should,  since  the 
President  had  proceeded  so  far,  acquiesce  in  his 
policy  as  a  finality  before  the  meeting  of  Congress 
in  December.  Stevens  had  but  one  hope,  which  was 
to  get  the  rebel  States  in  a  territorial  condition. 
This  was  in  the  line  of  Sumner's  reconstruction 
policy.  That  once  accomplished,  the  Pennsylvania 
Congressman  did  not  doubt  Congress  would  then  be 
able  to  deal  with  the  question,  and  avert  the  impend 
ing  peril  to  Northern  political  ascendency  which  was 
generally  looked  upon  as  one  of,  if  not  the  capital 
achievement  of  the  war. 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   377 

Henry  Winter  Davis  saw  but  two  modes  of  avert 
ing  the  threatened  catastrophe  of  a  return  to  power 
of  the  South  in  the  restored  Union,  and  they  were 
for  Congress  on  assembling  "  to  pass  a  law  by  two- 
thirds  over  the  President's  veto,  prescribing  the 
conditions  of  reconstruction  of  any  State  govern 
ment,  and  declaring  none  republican  in  form  which 
excludes  negroes  from  voting,"  or  secondly,  "to  pass 
an  amendment  of  the  Constitution  over  the  head  of 
the  President,  prescribing  universal  suffrage."  Mr. 
Davis  did  not,  however,  anticipate  with  any  con 
fidence  that  the  then  coming  Congress  would  be  equal 
o  these  things.  He  was  in  despair  at  the  national 
outlook,  and  died  suddenly  when  Congress  had  been 
in  session  but  a  few  weeks. 

Sumner  shared  in  the  general  dejection  and  fore 
boding  of  disaster.  His  apprehensions  as  a  states 
man  and  a  man  were  indeed  intense.  So  great  were 
these  fears  of  evil  that  he  determined  to  make  a  final 
attempt  to  induce  the  President  to  hearken  to  the 
prayers  and  remonstrances  of  his  party,  and  to  aban 
don  his  mischievous  policy  in  the  treatment  of  the 
rebel  States.  On  the  eve  of  the  assembling  of  Con 
gress,  he  called  on  Mr.  Johnson  in  pursuance  of  this 
purpose,  and  though  the  interview  lasted  three  hours, 
Mr.  Sumner  at  its  close  was  convinced  that  the  Presi 
dent  was  beyond  the  reach  of  reason,  and  that  there 
was  nothing  for  the  Republican  party  to  do,  under 
the  circumstances,  but  to  annul  by  Congressional 
action  the  Presidential  policy,  and  to  save  the  results 
of  the  war  to  the  North  and  the  negro  by  a  recon 
struction  which  should  guaranty  protection  to  the 
one  and  citizenship  to  the  other. 


378  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

The  prevision  of  Winter  Davis,  that  the  Congress 
which  was  to  convene  in  December,  1865,  would  not 
be  equal  to  the  contest  with  the  President,  was  fully 
borne  out  by  its  performance,  or  rather  by  its  failures 
in  that  regard.  This  was  owing  partly  to  the  in 
disposition  of  many  Republican  members  of  both 
branches  to  take  issue  with  the  administration,  lest 
the  doing  so  should  perchance  divide  and  damage 
the  party,  but  more  especially  was  it  due  to  their 
strong  unwillingness  to  adopt  the  idea  of  colored 
suffrage  as  a  condition  of  reconstruction  of  the  rebel 
States. 

In  one  form  or  another  the  equal  rights  of  the  col 
ored  race  was  almost  constantly  before  that  Congress. 
It  was  actually  equal,  however,  to  the  passage,  over  the 
veto  of  the  President, of  the  first  Civil  Rights  Bill, which 
opened  all  courts,  State  and  national,  to  colored  per 
sons  as  parties  and  witnesses,  as  to  white  citizens,  but 
it  could  not  conquer  its  prejudice  against  an  exten 
sion  of  the  suffrage  to  the  Southern  colored  man, 
until  assisted  by  the  fall  elections  of  1866.  To  cross 
that  rubicon  of  reconstruction  a  radical  leader  like 
Sumner  could  not  budge  it  an  inch  during  its  long 
session.  The  Republican  majority  of  both  Houses 
shrank  back  from  colored  suffrage  as  the  Government 
had  previously  shuffled  and  played  the  coward  be 
fore  emancipation  and  colored  troops. 

How  to  protect  the  North  and  the  Republican 
party  against  the  return  to  power  of  the  South,  with 
out  resorting  to  colored  suffrage,  was  in  truth  the 
problem  which  that  Congress  endeavored  to  solve. 
Could  the  ascendency  of  the  Republican  party  be 
preserved,  and  Northern  supremacy  in  the  recon- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   379 

structed  Union  be  secured,  without  having  recourse 
to  so  extraordinary  and  extreme  a  measure  ?  If  so, 
that  Congress  wanted  to  discover  just  such  a  go- 
between  way,  and  to  walk  therein.  This  was  true, 
then,  of  leaders  like  Fessenden,  Sherman,  and  Trum- 
bull,  who  afterwards  accepted  the  new  radicalism, 
aye,  of  stout-hearted  Thad.  Stevens,  and  sturdy  Ben. 
Wade  as  well.  They  all  in  that  Congress  desired 
and  sought  without  ceasing  another  and  more  con 
venient  way  to  attain  their  object,  viz.,  the  political 
ascendency  of  their  section  in  the  Republic,  the 
erection  of  a  permanent  barrier  against  future  tidal 
waves  of  Southern  domination  over  it. 

This  grand  end  Congress  attempted  to  reach  by  a 
proposition  to  apportion  representatives  among  the 
several  States  according  to  population,  with  a  proviso 
which  excluded  from  the  basis  of  representation  all 
persons  excluded  from  the  right  to  vote  on  account 
of  race  and  color.  The  calculation  of  the  author  of 
the  device,  who  was  Mr.  Elaine,  and  of  the  Re 
publican  members  of  Congress  who  supported  it,  was 
that  the  South,  caught  between  the  upper  and  nether 
millstones  of  it,  would  rather  than  have  its  federal 
numbers  reduced  extend  the  right  to  vote  to  the 
freedmen,  in  which  case  the  new  voters  would  aug 
ment  the  numerical  strength  of  the  Republican  party 
and  so  confirm  it  in  power;  but,  if  on  the  other  hand, 
the  South  should,  in  view  of  these  future  conse 
quences,  refuse  to  take  that  horn  of  the  dilemma 
presented  to  it  by  Congress,  it  would  be  thrown 
upon  the  other  horn  which  would  operate  with  no 
less  fatality  to  any  future  revival  of  its  political  as 
cendency  under  the  Constitution.  Thoroughly  clipped 


380  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

in  the  wings  and  spurs  of  it,  the  dreaded  Southern 
bird  would,  of  course,  be  no  match  in  the  national 
cockpit  for  the  mighty  Northern  fowl.  Plainly  the 
prime  object  of  this  scheme  was  not  protection  for 
the  freedmen.  Protection  for  the  North  and  the 
Republican  party  was  the  one  clear  end  which  it  was 
designed  to  reach.  If  the  negroes  got  there,  too,  so 
be  it.  But  their  safe  arrival  could  not  be,  under  the 
circumstances,  chargeable  to  the  Republican  party, 
but  to  an  inscrutable  Providence,  for  whose  action  in 
the  premises  that  party  could  not  possibly  be  held 
accountable  at  the  polls. 

Against  this  compromise  proposition  Sumner  set 
himself  like  flint.  He  was  not  willing  to  intrust 
national  security  to  the  chapter  of  probabilities  and 
accidents  to  which  they  were  committed  by  the 
"  Elaine  Amendment."  He  would  establish  irreversible 
guaranties  of  freedom,  and  the  public  faith,  and  the 
national  peace,  all  of  which  could  be  done  in  but  one 
way,  and  that  was  by  carrying  out  in  the  reconstruc 
tion  of  the  South  the  promises  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  by  the  ample  execution  of  the  consti 
tutional  injunction  to  guaranty  to  the  several  South 
ern  States  as  a  condition  precedent  to  their  re- 
admission  into  the  Union  a  republican  form  of 
government.  Nor  more  nor  less  would  he  support  or 
be  satisfied  with. 

Colored  suffrage,  he  argued,  was  not  a  matter  of 
national  choice  at  all,  but  an  overruling  necessity.  It 
was  the  all-sufficient  guaranty,  being  in  itself  peace 
maker,  reconciler,  schoolmaster,  and  protector.  "And 
now,"  he  said  finely,  "  declaring  my  belief  in  liberty 
and  equality  as  the  God-given  birthright  of  all  men, 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   381 

let  me  say,  in  the  same  spirit,  if  this  be  an  error,  it  is 
an  error  I  love — if  this  be  a  fault,  it  is  a  fault  I  shall 
be  slow  to  renounce — if  this  be  an  illusion,  it  is  an 
illusion  which  I  pray  may  wrap  the  world  in  its  an 
gelic  forms." 

The  "  Elaine  Amendment,"  after  a  while,  passed 
both  Houses  of  Congress,  but  was  vetoed  by  the 
President.  It  was,  thereupon,  carried  by  the  lower 
chamber  over  the  veto,  but  in  the  Senate,  owing  to 
Sumner's  opposition,  it  failed  to  receive  the  requisite 
two  thirds  vote,  and,  therefore,  was  never  submitted 
for  ratification  to  the  States.  Sumner's  opposition 
to  this  pretty  political  contrivance,  which  was  to 
secure  protection  to  the  North  and  the  Republican 
party  at  the  expense  of  the  negro,  called  down  upon 
him  from  his  Republican  associates  a  good  deal  of 
harsh  criticism.  Thaddeus  Stevens,  in  particular, 
bitterly  blamed  him  for  its  final  failure  to  pass  the 
Senate  over  the  head  of  the  President.  But  none  of 
these  things  moved  Sumner  from  his  fixed  purpose  to 
make  colored  suffrage  an  indispensable  element  in 
the  reconstruction  of  the  South. 

The  dread  of  a  return  of  the  South  to  power  in  the 
restored  Union  had  another  and  unmistakable  mani 
festation  in  this  Congress.  It  was  the  meaning  of 
the  movement  to  secure  the  admission  of  Colorado 
and  Nebraska  to  the  ranks  of  the  States,  which 
would,  when  effected,  give  the  North  four  more  votes 
in  the  Senate  and  as  many  in  the  House,  before  the 
rebel  States  got  back  into  their  old  places.  Pro 
tection  was  the  soul  of  this  attempt,  protection  for 
the  North,  not  for  the  negro,  which  the  constitutions 
of  these  would-be  States  left  no  room  for  doubt. 


382  CHARLES   SUMNER. 

Each  of  these  instruments  limited  the  right  to  vote 
to  white  male  citizens. 

But  here  again  Sumner's  uncompromising  spirit 
proved  a  thorn  in  the  sides  of  his  party.  His  associ 
ates,  not  all,  but  many  of  them,  were  for  creating  two 
new  States,  regardless  of  the  wrong  which  their 
fundamental  laws  did  the  colored  race,  because  the 
exigencies  of  party  called  for  more  votes  in  Congress, 
and  the  Electoral  College.  But  with  Sumner  prin 
ciple  was  ever  above  party.  He  could  not  vote  to 
grant  the  prayer  of  these  applicant  States  when  they 
came  with  the  stain  of  inequality  and  caste  upon  their 
hands.  No,  however  great  might  be  the  emergent 
needs  of  party,  he  could  not  and  would  not  vote  to 
admit  Colorado  and  Nebraska  until  their  constitu 
tions  were  republican  in  form,  and  consistent  with 
the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

Even  stanch  old  Ben  Wade  did  not  consider  the 
matter  worth  fighting  for  in  Colorado  in  view  of  the 
insignificance  of  the  number  of  colored  people  in  the 
Territory.  But  Sumner  retorted  with  characteristic 
integrity  of  purpose,  that  we  should  fight  for  a 
principle  if  by  the  sacrifice  of  it  only  one  man  was 
injured  in  his  liberties.  "  In  other  times,"  he  ex 
claimed,  "  the  cry  was  '  No  more  slave  States.'  The 
cry  of  our  time  should  be  *  No  more  States  with  in 
equality  of  rights  !  ' 

After  a  protracted  struggle  Colorado  and  Nebraska 
were  compelled  to  abandon  the  obnoxious  distinction 
contained  in  their  respective  constitutions.  It  was 
not,  however,  until  the  short  session  that  Nebraska 
got  in,  and  this  was  achieved  over  the  veto  of  the 
President.  Colorado  was  less  lucky,  and  her  admis- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   383 

sion  was  longer  delayed.  But  the  principle  of 
colored  suffrage  as  an  indispensable  prerequisite  for 
admission  into  the  Union  was  established  by  the 
precedent  made  in  the  case  of  the  former. 

Sumner  turned  his  attention  likewise  to  the  aboli 
tion  of  the  hateful  distinction  against  color  which  dis 
figured  the  election  laws  of  the  District  of  Columbia. 
Having  become  a  member  of  the  Committee  on  the 
District  of  Columbia,  he  pressed  the  justice  of  colored 
suffrage  upon  his  associates  until  the  Committee 
reported  a  bill  prohibiting  any  exclusion  from  the 
right  to  vote  on  account  of  race  and  color.  An  edu 
cational  qualification  was  at  first  grafted  by  way  of 
amendment  upon  the  bill,  but  it  was  afterwards 
rejected  in  the  Senate,  owing,  no  doubt,  to  the  grow 
ing  feeling  that  the  suffrage  must  be  without  this 
qualification  if  the  adoption  of  colored  suffrage  in 
the  reconstruction  of  the  South  were  to  act  as  a 
barrier  against  the  return  of  that  section  to  power  in 
the  Union. 

This  was  at  the  long  session  of  the  Thirty-ninth 
Congress,  which  could  not  be  relied  upon  for  any 
radical  handling  of  the  colored-suffrage  question 
in  opposition  to  the  President.  The  bill  extending 
the  elective  franchise  to  colored  citizens  of  the  Dis 
trict  was,  under  the  circumstances,  allowed  to  go 
over  to  the  short  session,  when  the  autumn  election 
of  1866  should  have  occurred,  and  given  the  popular 
cue  to  dubious-minded  Congressmen  on  the  subject. 
The  rapidly  rising  tide  of  public  sentiment  was  flow 
ing  with  accumulated  force  in  but  one  direction,  viz., 
toward  a  reorganization  of  the  rebel  States  on  the 
basis  of  universal  suffrage  as  the  only  sure  guaranty 


384  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

to  the  continued  political  ascendency  of  the  North  in 
the  Union.  Sumner  was,  therefore,  wise  to  postpone 
action  on  the  District  Bill  to  the  short  session,  when 
the  voice  of  the  Northern  people  should  have  been 
heard  at  the  polls  on  reconstruction  and  colored 
suffrage. 

On  the  first  day  of  the  short  session  he  pressed  the 
District  Elective  Franchise  Bill  to  a  vote  in  the 
Senate.  Ten  days  afterward  that  body  passed  the 
measure  without  the  educational  qualification  pro 
vision.  The  next  day  it  went  promptly  through  the 
House.  It  was  vetoed  by  the  President,  but  was 
passed  by  both  Houses  over  the  veto,  and  so  became 
a  law  as  well  as  a  guide  for  similar  legislation  in  the 
reconstruction  of  the  South. 

The  Thirty-ninth  Congress,  having  had  its  courage 
stiffened  by  the  elections,  was  ready  to  inaugurate  a 
policy  of  reconstruction  of  the  rebel  States  in  opposi 
tion  to  that  of  the  President.  The  House  took  the 
initiative  by  the  passage  of  a  bill  "  for  the  efficient 
government  of  the  insurrectionary  States,"  which,  as 
it  went  to  the  Senate,  contained  no  provision  in 
regard  to  colored  suffrage  or  to  the  exclusion  of 
rebels. 

The  consideration  by  the  Senate  of  this  bill  de 
veloped  wide  divergencies  of  views  on  the  subject  by 
the  Republicans  of  that  body.  Some  were  satisfied 
with  measures  of  protection  simply,  while  others 
wanted  to  add  to  protection  colored  suffrage  as  an 
act  of  justice  to  the  freedmen  which  would  operate 
at  once  as  a  safeguard  to  themselves  against  the  old 
slavemasters  and  the  best  possible  protection  to  the 
North  from  the  same  class. 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   385 

This  latter  view  finally  prevailed  with  the  Senate, 
which  adopted  a  substitute  bill,  introducing  the 
principle  of  colored  suffrage  into  the  South.  This 
bill  was  rejected  by  the  House  because  it  did  not 
exclude  rebels  from  the  right  to  vote.  Without  such 
a  provision,  it  seemed  to  Thad.  Stevens  that  the  meas 
ure  instead  of  protecting  would  "  open  the  flood 
gates  of  misery."  The  Senate,  however,  insisting  on 
its  substitute,  the  House  receded  from  its  position, 
and  passed  the  Senate  bill  with  an  amendment 
which  embodied  to  a  limited  extent  the  principle  of 
exclusion  of  rebels.  This  action  of  the  House  was 
concurred  in  by  the  Senate.  Vetoed  by  the  President, 
the  first  Congressional  Reconstruction  Act  passed 
both  Houses  over  the  negative  of  the  executive  and 
so  became  a  law. 

Congress,  influenced  by  its  fears,  had  at  length  got 
itself  in  motion  and  nearly  in  line  with  Sumner's 
position  on  the  Southern  question,  by  requiring  that  in 
voting  for  delegates  to  conventions  to  frame  constitu 
tions  for  the  rebel  States  there  should  be  no  exclusion 
on  account  of  race  or  color,  and  that  this  principle 
of  equal  suffrage  should  be  embodied  in  the  instru 
ments  so  framed  as  an  indispensable  qualification  for 
the  readmission  of  these  States  into  the  Union. 

In  addition  to  colored  suffrage  as  a  factor  in  the 
reconstruction  of  the  South,  Sumner  maintained  that 
it  was  the  duty  of  the  national  Government  to  guar 
antee  universal  education  for  that  section  also,  and 
a  homestead  for  every  head  of  a  family  of  freedmen. 
He  was,  besides,  in  favor  of  a  more  rigid  exclusion  of 
the  disloyal  portion  of  the  Southern  population  from 
participation  in  the  government  of  the  Southern 
25 


386  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

States  than  was  provided  for  by  the  Reconstruction 
Act.  He  wanted  a  provision  incorporated  in  the 
the  Constitution  of  every  Southern  State,  requiring 
its  legislature  to  establish  and  support  a  system  of 
free  public  schools,  open  to  all  without  distinction  of 
race  or  color.  All  these  things  were  included  in  his 
scheme  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  South.  All 
these  things  he  tried  again  and  again  to  have  Con 
gress  include  in  its  plan  in  that  regard,  but  without 
avail. 

Two  other  reconstruction  measures,  supplimen- 
tary  to  the  Act  passed  March  2,  1867,  went  through 
the  Fortieth  Congress  in  quick  succession.  Each  of 
these  Acts  like  the  first  law  encountered  the  objec 
tions  of  President  Johnson,  and  was  thereupon 
passed  over  his  veto  by  the  two  Houses  of  Congress. 
The  contest  between  the  National  Executive  and  the 
National  Legislature  had  meantime  become  very 
serious.  The  President  seemed  bent  on  balking 
Congress,  and  defeating  the  will  of  the  North  re 
specting  the  reconstruction  of  the  South.  The  veto 
power  was  in  constant  requisition  by  him.  With 
this  powerful  weapon  he  ran  atilt  against  every 
measure  passed  by  Congress  and  bearing  any  sort  of 
relation  to  the  two  races  in  the  South.  Not  even  the 
joint  resolution,  proposing  the  adoption  of  the  Four 
teenth  Amendment  by  the  States,  was  able  to  escape 
the  Presidential  negative.  On  this  Amendment  to 
the  Constitution,  the  North  may  he  said  to  have  set 
its  heart  and  hope.  The  attempt  of  the  President  to 
kill  it  excited  against  him,  in  consequence,  through 
out  that  section  passionate  indignation  and  fierce 
aversion.  The  people  became  furiously  anti-Johnson. 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.   387 

Congress,  as  the  strife  waxed  between  it  and  the 
President,  became  furiously  anti-Johnson  also. 

More  than  any  member  of  either  branch  of  Con 
gress,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Thad.  Stevens, 
was  Sumner  opposed  to  the  President  and  his  South 
ern  policy.  And  the  President  so  understood  it,  and 
returned  the  hate  of  those  great  men  measure  for 
measure,  heaping  up  and  running  over.  From  the 
steps  of  the  White  House,  in  a  speech  to  a  number 
of  citizens  who  had  gathered  to  pay  their  respects  to 
him  as  the  head  of  the  nation  on  Washington's  Birth 
day  of  the  year  1866,  Mr.  Johnson  classed  Sumner, 
Stevens,  and  Wendell  Phillips  with  Jefferson  Davis, 
Toombs,  and  Slidell. 

And  Sumner's  animadversions,  it  must  be  confes 
sed,  were  hardly  less  personal  or  complimentary  to 
the  President,  whose  message  on  the  Southern  situa 
tion,  the  Defender  of  Humanity,  characterized  on  the 
floor  of  the  Senate  as  "  whitewashing,"  finding  a 
parallel  between  the  whitewashing  message  of  Frank 
lin  Pierce,  which  covered  up  the  crimes  committed 
against  free  Kansas  by  the  slave-power,  and  the 
whitewashing  message  of  Andrew  Johnson,  which 
covered  up  the  actual  condition  of  things  in  the 
South.  A  year  later  the  Massachusetts  Senator,  in 
the  same  place,  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce  the 
chief  magistrate  as  "a  bad  man,"  who  had  exposed 
himself  in  "  a  condition  of  intoxication  while  taking 
the  oath  of  office  as  Vice-President."  His  speeches 
were  rated  as  "  maudlin,"  and  their  author  was  ac 
cused  of  degrading  the  country  as  it  had  never  been 
before  degraded.  Nor  were  there  wanting  allusions 
to  rumors  "  of  pardons  sold,  or  of  personal  corrup- 


388  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tion,"  nor  yet  the  ominous  invective  that  the  Presi 
dent  was  "  the  enemy  of  his  country." 

The  denunciation  of  the  President  "  as  the  enemy 
of  his  country,"  naturally  enough,  produced  a  sensa 
tion  among  the  friends  of  the  Administration  in  the 
Senate.  The  speaker  was  quickly  called  to  order, 
first  by  Mr.  McDougall,  and  afterwards,  on  its  repeti 
tion,  by  Mr.  Doolittle.  On  the  first  point,  the  CHAIR 
[Mr.  Anthony,  of  Rhode  Island],  declared  the  re 
marks  in  order,  and  on  the  second  point,  the  ques 
tion  being  submitted  to  the  Senate,  the  language  was 
again  sustained.  All  this  was  significant,  the  grave 
charge  against  the  executive  head  of  the  nation, 
and  the  action  of  the  presiding  officer  of  the  Senate 
and  of  that  body  itself  in  relation  to  it,  highly  signifi 
cant  of  the  impeachment  scheme,  which  Congress 
was  even  then  preparing  for  the  overthrow  of  its 
hated  adversary. 

Sumner's  frank,  fierce  criticism  of  Andrew  Johnson 
was  strongly  condemned  by  several  of  his  Republican 
associates,  like  Fessenden  and  Sherman,  on  the 
ground  that  as  a  Senator  he  would  be  called  to  sit  as 
one  of  the  judges  before  whom  the  President  would 
be  tried,  in  the  event  of  his  impeachment.  But  Sum- 
ner  held  firmly  to  the  complete  immunity  of  the  Sen 
ate  in  that  regard,  and  its  duty  to  consider  the  facts 
and  circumstances  of  the  case  in  advance  of  impeach 
ment.  For  himself  he  did  not  doubt  that  the  Presi 
dent  was  "  a  bad  man,"  and  that  he  should  be 
"  watched  or  removed." 

This  was  certainly  the  view  which  Congress  took 
of  the  matter.  So  decidedly  was  Congress  of  the 
opinion  that  the  President  needed  to  be  watched  that 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.    389 

it  hardly  dared  to  adjourn  when  once  it  assembled. 
If  it  passed  an  act  to  check  his  activity  in  one  direc 
tion,  he  was  sure  to  break  out  in  another.  It  was 
move  and  checkmate,  checkmate  and  move,  between 
them,  according  to  a  sort  of  perpetual  motion.  When 
Congress  convened,  Sumner  begrudged  the  least  frac 
tion  of  time  for  adjournment,  which  could  be  added 
to  the  term  of  the  session.  On  one  occasion  Mr. 
Grimes,  of  Iowa,  moved  the  adjournment  of  the  two 
Houses  at  eleven  and  a  half  o'clock  on  a  given  date, 
whereupon,  Sumner  suggested  twelve  o'clock  in 
stead,  giving  as  his  reason  that  he  was  not  willing  to 
leave  one  half  hour  to  the  President,  within  which  he 
may  take  advantage  of  the  absence  of  Congress  and 
issue  commissions  which  might  run  to  the  last  of  the 
next  session. 

The  President  had  announced  his  intention  to 
"  kick  out  of  the  Government  "  the  opponents  of  his 
policy.  And  as  he  was  a  man  with  rather  light  ex 
tremities  in  this  respect,  he  soon  set  to  work  with  a 
vengeance  to  prove  himself  as  good  as  his  word.  The 
opponents  of  his  policy  began  to  feel  in  consequence 
an  official  vis  a  tergo  as  far  and  as  fast  as  the  Presi 
dential  heels  could  reach.  By  the  Tenure  of  Office 
Act,  Congress  essayed  to  restrain  to  a  limited  extent 
this  recalcitrant  propensity  of  the  President.  To 
Sumner's  mind  the  check  imposed  by  the  Act  went 
not  far  enough.  He  proposed  to  include  within  its 
intendment  all  officers  and  agents,  except  clerks, 
and  the  vacation  of  all  offices  filled  by  the  President 
or  heads  of  Departments  without  the  advice  and 
consent  of  the  Senate  since  July  i,  1866,  on  the  last 
day  of  the  month  of  February  of  the  year  1867. 


390  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Sumner's  amendment  being  altogether  too  drastic 
a  dose  of  Congressional  rule  for  Republican  stomachs 
to  take,  for  there  had  already  developed  in  the  party 
decided  differences  and  symptoms  of  reaction  in  the 
contest  with  the  Executive  Department  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  it  was  rejected  by  the  Senate.  But  no 
sooner  had  the  Office  Tenure  Act  become  law  than 
the  President,  through  the  interpretation  fastened 
upon  it  by  his  legal  advisers,  was  able  to  evade  its 
provisions.  And  so  went  on  this  duel  between  Con 
gress  and  the  President,  growing  fiercer  and  yet  more 
fierce  week  after  week  and  month  after  month,  until 
exasperated  to  the  highest  degree  of  passion  and 
resentment,  Congress  shot  its  last  arrow,  the  impeach 
ment,  in  the  hope  of  destroying  the  one-man  power 
of  Andrew  Johnson.  Sumner  sat  as  one  of  the  judges 
of  the  impeached  President,  and  voted  him  guilty  of 
the  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors  charged  upon  his 
head  by  the  House  of  Representatives.  Sumner  filed 
a  powerful  statement  of  his  reasons  for  so  voting. 

Swiftly  in  the  track  of  the  Congressional  recon 
struction  measures  armed  foes  sprang  up  to  shoot 
them  to  death.  Violence  and  misgovernment  arose  all 
over  the  South.  Tremendous  scenes  and  saturnalias 
of  blood  and  scoundrelism  .appeared  in  every  State. 
Thieves  and  thugs  established  between  them  a  reign 
of  terror,  the  like  of  which  history  has  rarely  been 
called  to  shudder  and  weep  over. 

Sectional  and  party  selfishness  and  short-sighted 
ness  was  the  fatal  rock  on  which  the  Congressional 
attempt  to  reconstruct  the  Southern  States  was 
wrecked.  The  President's  policy  had  left  out  the 
negro  and  the  North.  The  Congressional  plan  had 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  COLORED  SUFFRAGE.    3.91 

ignored  the  South  and  included  the  negro  as  a  second 
ary  consideration  only.  The  terrible  illiteracy  of 
the  new  citizens,  and  their  appalling  poverty,  this 
scheme  did  not  grapple  with  or  seek  to  reduce.  Alas  ! 
Congress  did  not  perceive  that  the  Southern  serf- 
power,  so  justly  dreaded  by  it,  could  not  be  over 
thrown  but  by  the  general  diffusion  of  intelligence 
and  property  among  those  who  constitute  the  basis 
of  that  power.  No  plan  or  policy  looking  to  the  ulti 
mate  solution  of  the  Southern  problem  will  prosper 
which  does  not  seek  primarily  the  education  and 
social  well  being  of  the  laboring  classes  of  that  sec 
tion.  And  this,  we  think,  is  what  Sumner  had  in  his 
mind  when  he  proposed  a  public  school  system  for 
the  South,  open  to  all  without  distinction  of  race  and 
color,  and  a  homestead  for  the  head  of  every  family 
of  freedmen. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

.CHARACTER    AND    CLOSING    YEARS. 

BETWEEN  the  two  schools  of  political  thought 
which  have  arisen  under  the  American  Constitution, 
viz.,  the  State  Rights  and  the  Nationalist,  Sumner 
held  all  his  life  firmly  to  the  principles  of  the  latter. 
In  his  published  works  the  word  "  national "  is  habit 
ually  used  instead  of  "  federal  "  which  carries  with  it 
the  idea  of  many  independent  and  local  centres  of 
government,  rather  than  that  of  one  supreme  whole 
and  authority  which  belongs  to  the  other.  That  unity 
and  power  was  the  grand  object  of  attainment  of  the 
framers  of  the  Constitution,  he  had  never  a  doubt. 
That  the  Republic  had  missed  the  aim  of  its  found 
ers  in  this  regard  was  owing,  he  declared,  to  the 
fact  that  slavery,  with  its  barbarisms  and  pretensions, 
had,  in  its  long  strife  with  freedom,  taken  refuge 
behind  the  bulwarks  of  the  States,  and,  thus  in 
trenched,  had  conducted  its  systematic  and  decen 
tralizing  operations  against  the  unity  and  power  of 
the  nation.  When  the  combatant  fell,  Sumner  was 
desirous  to  demolish  in  one  respect  the  fortification 
behind  which  it  had  been  able  to  work  such  mischief 
to  mankind,  and  to  defeat  the  purpose  of  the  Repub 
lic  at  the  same  time. 

And  this,  while  leaving  untouched  many  things 
properly  appertaining  to  local  police,  he  believed 
might  be  accomplished  by  placing  the  great  prin- 


CHARACTER    AND    CLOSING    YEARS.  393 

ciples  iind  interests  of  national  unity  and  human 
rights  under  central  guardianship  to  the  end  that 
through  all  the  parts  there  might  be  uniformity  and 
identity  in  those  regards.  Or,  as  he  put  it  in  a  lecture 
in  New  York,  in  1867  :  "As  in  the  nation  there  can 
be  but  one  sovereignty,  so  there  can  be  but  one  citi 
zenship.  The  unity  of  sovereignty  finds  its  counter 
part  and  complement  in  the  unity  of  citizenship,  and 
the  two  together  are  the  tokens  of  a  united  people. 
Thus  are  the  essential  conditions  of  national  life  all 
resolved  into  three — one  sovereignty,  one  citizenship^  one 
people" 

It  was  in  pursuance  of  this  sublime  idea  that  he, 
in  February,  1869,  when  the  Senate  had  under  con 
sideration  a  joint  resolution  from  the  House  propos 
ing  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitution, 
offered  a  bill  as  a  substitute,  and  vindicated  the 
powers  of  Congress  in  the  premises,  on  the  principle 
that  anything  for  Human  Rights  is  constitutional. 
"There  can  be  no  State  Rights  against  Human 
Rights,"  he  exclaimed:  "and  this  is  the  supreme  law 
of  the  land,  anything  in  the  Constitution  or  laws  of 
any  State  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding." 

Two  years  later,  speaking  in  the  Senate  in  support 
of  the  "  Force  Bill,"  he  expressed  himself  again  on 
this  head  and  in  this  wise:  "The  nation  will  not 
enter  the  State,  except  for  the  safeguard  of  rights 
national  in  character,  and  then  only  like  the  sunshine, 
for  the  equal  good  of  all.  Here  is  a  just  centralism, 
here  is  a  generous  imperialism.  Shunning  with 
patriotic  care  that  injurious  centralism,  and  that  fatal 
imperialism,  which  have  been  the  nemesis  of  France, 
I  hail  that  other  centralism  which  supplies  an  equal 


394  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

protection  to  every  citizen,  and  that  other  imperial 
ism  which  makes  Equal  Rights  the  supreme  law,  to  be 
maintained  by  the  national  arm  in  all  parts  of  the 
land." 

Any  man  who  follows  an  object  with  the  earnest 
ness  and  persistency  with  which  Sumner  pursued  the 
one  great  purpose  of  his  life  is  apt  to  be  viewed  by 
his  contemporaries  as  a  man  of  one  idea.  This  was 
true  in  the  case  of  Sumner  who  was  looked  upon  by 
many  in  that  light.  But  the  criticism  had  for  him  no 
terrors.  "  Whoever  does  anything  with  his  whole 
heart,"  said  he  with  admirable  sense,  at  the  Republi 
can  State  Convention  of  Massachusetts,  held  at  Wor 
cester,  September  8,  1869,  and  which  nominated  him 
for  his  fourth  term  in  the  Senate;  "  whoever  does  any 
thing  with  his  whole  heart  makes  it  for  the  time  his 
one  idea.  Every  discoverer,  every  inventor,  every 
poet,  every  artist,  every  orator,  every  general,  every 
statesman  is  absorbed  in  his  work,  and  he  succeeds 
just  in  proportion  as  for  the  time  it  becomes  his  one 
idea." 

If  Sumner  was  eminently  a  man  of  one  idea  in  this 
fine  way,  he  was  by  no  means  so  in  that  other  which 
implies  an  incapacity  for  receiving  a  plurality  of 
noble  ideas.  All  the  best  and  most  advanced 
thoughts  of  the  age  for  the  betterment  of  the  human 
family  found  welcome  in  the  room  of  his  capacious 
mind,  aid  and  comfort  in  his  all-embracing  sympa 
thies.  Writing  in  May,  1872,  to  the  Convention  of 
the  Massachusetts  Labor  Union,  he  evinced  his  inter 
est  in  the  movement  for  the  reduction  of  the  hours  of 
work  in  words  as  happy  as  they  are  wise.  The  Eight 
flour  Law  he  apprehended  to  be  "  especially  valuable, 


CHARACTER    AND    CLOSING    YEARS.  395 

because  it  promises  more  time  for  education  and 
general  improvement.  If  the  experiment  is  success 
ful  in  this  respect,  I  shall  be  less  curious  on  the  ques 
tion  of  pecuniary  profit  and  loss,  for,  to  my  mind,  the 
education  of  the  human  family  is  above  dollars  and 
dividends." 

He  took  an  early  and  enlightened  interest  in  the 
the  subject  of  Civil  Service  Reform,  the  refunding  of 
the  national  debt,  and  the  resumption  of  specie  pay 
ments  by  the  Government,  the  revision  of  the  tariff 
and  reduction  of  duties.  Financial  reconstruction 
after  the  war,  which  he  placed  in  importance  and  the 
order  of  accomplishment  second  only  to  political 
reconstruction,  he  clearly  perceived  required  two 
things  at  least  to  make  it  successful,  viz.,  the  main 
tenance  of  the  national  credit  and  the  reduction  of 
the  burdens  of  taxation.  And  these  he  always 
insisted  should  never  be  forgotten  in  any  measures 
looking  to  this  grand  economic  achievement. 

The  Republican  Party  found  in  Sumner  constant 
and  earnest  support  where  principles — ideas — were 
put  forward  and  exalted  by  it.  But  when  men  waxed 
stronger  than  they  in  its  councils  and  conduct,  he  was 
too  true  to  blink  at  the  change  for  the  sake  of  merely 
personal  and  political  ends.  He  promptly  raised  the 
voice  of  remonstrance  and  rebuke,  refused  to  hold 
his  peace  where  the  offender  was  no  less  a  personage 
than  the  chosen  chief  of  the  party  and  of  the  nation, 
as  in  the  case  of  President  Grant. 

These  two  great  men  had  unhappily  no  just  appre 
ciation  of  each  other.  The  man  of  action  and  the 
man  of  thought  are  not  apt  to  possess  a  superfluity 
of  affection  or  appreciation  the  one  for  the  other. 


396  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

Sumner,  no  doubt,  honestly  believed  that  Grant  knew 
nothing  but  war;  and  Grant  as  honestly  supposed 
that  Sumner  had  done  nothing  but  talk.  But  in  their 
quarrel  an  impartial  observer  must  needs  adjudge 
Grant  very  much  to  blame,  much  more  so  than  was 
his  illustrious  antagonist,  who  upheld  the  declining 
influence  of  principles  and  ideas  as  against  the 
extraordinary  personalism  and  assumptions  of  the 
one-man  power  which  signalized  the  administration 
of  Grant. 

The  civil  career  of  the  great  general,  his  best  friends 
must  confess,  was  not  a  brilliant  success  His  mili 
tary  training  and  notions  of  authority  and  obedience 
were  not  applicable  to  the  office  of  President.  They 
qualified  him  admirably  to  control  the  operations  of 
war,  but  not  to  direct  those  of  peace.  He  could  lead 
armies  better  than  he  was  able  to  lead  a  political 
party  or  manage  the  affairs  of  an  empire. 

Sumner  shivered  his  first  lance  against  the  Presi 
dent  on  the  occasion  of  his  attempt  to  annex  San 
Domingo  to  the  United  States.  Grant  had  set  his 
heart  on  the  success  of  this  scheme;  had  used  his 
personal  and  official  solicitation  to  secure  its  adoption 
by  Congress,  had  made  frequent  visits  to  the  capitol 
for  the  purpose,  had  even  called  on  Sumner  to  enlist 
his  personal  influence  in  its  behalf.  But  Sumner,  for 
reasons  sufficient  and  honorable,  was  immovably 
opposed  to  the  scheme,  and  in  two  powerful  speeches 
in  the  Senate  thoroughly  and  sternly  exposed  the 
irregular,  unworthy,  and  violent  means  and  methods 
by  which  it  was  being  pushed  upon  the  people  of 
San  Domingo,  while  at  the  same  time  the  independ 
ence  of  Hayti  was  menaced  thereby. 


CHARACTER    AND    CLOSING    YEARS.  397 

Grant  would  not  forgive  Sumner  for  the  part 
played  by  him  toward  defeating  this  pet  international 
venture  of  the  administration,  nor  would  his  support 
ers  in  the  Senate.  The  military  instincts  and  train 
ing  of  the  President  treated  Sumner's  opposition  as 
an  act  of  mutiny  to  his  authority,  and  for  which  the 
great  culprit  must  needs  be  punished  as  an  example 
to  others  of  a  like  disposition.  Accordingly  Sumner's 
friend,  J.  Lothrop  Motley,  American  Minister  to 
Great  Britain,  was  recalled,  and  later  Sumner  himself 
was  degraded  from  the  chairmanship  of  the  Foreign 
Relations  Committee  of  the  Senate. 

But  if  Sumner's  conduct  in  the  San  Domingo  busi 
ness  failed  to  please  the  administration,  it  did  not  fail 
to  please  the  Republic  of  Hayti,  who,  grateful  to  the 
defender  of  her  independence,  presented  him  with  a 
gold  medal  in  token  of  her  sense  of  the  value  of  the 
generous  service  rendered  to  her  as  a  black  nation. 
Believing  that  the  spirit,  if  not  the  letter,  of  the  Con 
stitution  disabled  him  from  accepting  the  testimonial, 
Sumner  so  apprized  the  Haytian  Government,  which 
thereupon  presented  the  medal  to  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts.  It  was  deposited  among  similar 
treasures  in  the  State  Library,  where  it  may  still  be 
seen.  On  May  31,  1872,  Sumner  delivered  in  the 
Senate,  a  philippic,  which  produced  a  sensation  at  the 
time.  Its  title,  "  Republicanism  vs.  Grantism,"  indi 
cates  its  character.  The  speech  was  an  elaborate  and 
fiercely  eloquent  exposure  of  the  sins  of  omission  and 
of  commission  of  the  first  administration  of  President 
Grant.  Every  one  of  those  sins,  and  they  were  many 
and  serious,  Sumner,  with  avenging  pen,  had  written 
in  the  pages  of  his  philippic,  had  written  them  so 


398  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

large,  and  touched  them  with  such  harsh  and  vivid 
passion,  as  to  make  an  impression  upon  the  country 
of  the  decline  of  political  virtue,  and  of  the  rise  and 
spread  of  official  incapacity,  selfishness,  and  miscon 
duct,  which  was  not  soon  forgotten  by  it. 

In  the  Presidential  canvass  which  followed,  Sumner 
not  only  refused  to  support  General  Grant  for  reelec 
tion,  but  threw  his  influence  on  the  side  of  Greeley  and 
the  Liberal  Republican  revolt.  The  claims  of  party, 
and  the  "  sacramental  unction  of  a  regular  nomina 
tion,"  were  never  able,  with  him,  to  override  the  right 
of  individual  judgment,  to  nullify  the  rule  of  con 
science  and  principle.  He  was  essentially  a  free 
lance,  an  independent  in  politics,  the  first  great 
Mugwump  of  Massachusetts.  Much  perplexed  as  to 
the  course  they  ought  to  take  in  the  election,  Sum- 
ner's  counsel  was  sought  by  the  colored  people.  He 
frankly  apprized  them  of  his  own  inability  to  support 
Grant,  and  advised  them  to  vote  for  Horace  Greeley. 
Snmner's  watchword  for  the  campaign  was:  "  The 
unity  of  the  Republic  and  Equal  Rights  with  Recon 
ciliation." 

One  of  the  interesting  incidents  of  the  canvass  was 
an  open  letter  from  James  G.  Elaine  to  Mr.  Sumner, 
arraigning  him  as  recreant  to  party  and  principle, 
and  Sumner's  response  to  the  same.  Finding  him 
self,  the  reply  caustically  informed  Mr.  Blaine,  "with 
so  many  others  devoted  to  the  cause  I  have  always 
served  that  I  had  not  missed  you  until  you  hastened 
to  report  absence."  Blaine  taunted  Sumner  with  the 
ontrage  which  he  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Pres 
ton  S.  Brooks.  Nast,  in  a  clever  caricature  in  Har 
per 's  Weekly,  had  made  the  assault  do  duty  for  the 


CHARACTER    AND    OLOSING    YEARS.  399 

Republican  party  and  against  Mr.  Sumner  and  the 
Liberal  Republican  movement  also.  "  Never  while  a 
sufferer,"  SD  ran  on  this  particular  head  Sumner's 
reply  to  the  open  letter  of  Mr.  Elaine  ;  "  never,  while 
a  sufferer,  did  anybody  hear  me  speak  of  him  [Brooks] 
in  unkindness;  and  now  after  the  lapse  of  more  than 
half  a  generation,  I  will  not  unite  with  you  in  drag 
ging  him  from  the  grave  where  he  sleeps  to  aggra 
vate  the  passions  of  apolitical  conflict,  and  arrest  the 
longing  for  concord." 

"  Nothing  in  hate,"  he  said  later  in  the  campaign. 
"  Nothing  in  vengeance.  Nothing  in  passion.  I  am 
for  gentleness.  I  am  for  a  velvet  glove  ;  but  for  a 
while  I  wish  the  hand  of  iron."  On  the  assembling 
of  Congress  in  December,  he  introduced  a  bill  to 
prohibit  the  placing  of  the  "  names  of  battles  with 
fellow-citizens  on  the  army  register  or  the  regimental 
colors  of  the  United  States."  This  was  no  new 
thought  with  Sumner.  For  as  early  as  the  spring  of 
1862  he  introduced  into  the  Senate  a  resolution 
against  inscribing  the  names  of  victories  on  the 
regimental  colors  of  the  Union  forces. 

Nevertheless,  there  forthwith  arose  an  outcry  of 
wrath  against  him,  as  wanting  in  patriotism  and 
other  partisan  absurdities  because  of  the  share  taken 
by  him  in  the  campaign  then  just  closed.  Even 
Massachusetts  joined  angrily  in  the  Republican  hue 
and  cry  against  her  Bayard  who  had  ever  been  in 
her  service  and  that  of  freedom's,  sans  peur  et  sans 
reproche.  But,  as  in  other  days,  the  frowns  of  friends, 
the  passions  of  party,  the  clamor  of  the  populace, 
could  not  move  him  from  steadfast  principles  and 
fixed  convictions  of  right.  Nothing  for  vengeance  ; 


40O  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

everything  for  justice  was  his  motto  as  a  statesman.  It 
was  graven  on  his  heart,  bound  as  a  frontlet  upon 
his  whole  public  career.  Therefore  did  he  seek  re 
conciliation  by  the  way  of  liberty  and  equality. 
Therefore  was  he  in  favor  of  amnesty  and  equal 
rights  going  together  hand  in  hand,  that  the  dis 
abilities  of  the  former  slave  and  those  of  the  former 
master  should  be  removed  by  one  act  of  forgiveness 
and  protection. 

In  his  reply  to  the  letter  of  Mr.  Elaine,  Mr.  Sumner 
had  reminded  that  gentleman  of  the  fate  of  the  Sup 
plementary  Civil  Rights  Bill  in  a  Congress  controlled 
by  large  Republican  majorities  in  both  Houses, 
though  urged  by  him,  Sumner,  almost  daily  upon  its 
attention.  The  passage  of  this  bill,  which  opened  to 
all,  without  distinction  of  color,  inns,  juries,  schools, 
public  conveyances,  and  cemeteries,  was  with  Sum 
ner  as  the  very  apple  of  his  eye.  He  made  two 
admirable  speeches  in  support  of  the  measure.  In 
the  course  of  the  one  delivered  in  January,  1872,  he 
quoted  with  effect  that  fine  sentence  of  Rousseau's, 
that  "  It  is  precisely  because  the  force  of  things  tends 
always  to  destroy  equality  that  the  force  of  legisla 
tion  should  always  tend  to  maintain  it." 

On  January  27,  1874,  he  reintroduced  his  bill  and 
made  a  last  appeal  for  its  passage.  There  was  a 
noticeable  insistency,  an  urgency,  about  his  speech 
and  manner  on  this  occasion.  What  the  Senate  would 
do  for  equality  he  would  have  it  do  quickly  But  with 
all  his  earnestness  there  was  also  a  noticeable  calm 
ness,  a  softening  of  his  austere  temper,  and,  even  for 
him,  an  unwonted  solemnity  and  grandeur  of  tone. 
Those  powerful  weapons  of  his  in  earlier  days,  indig- 


CHARACTER    AND    CLO&ING    YEARS.  40! 

nation  and  invective,  he  had  laid  aside  for  those 
gentler  ones,  sweet  persuasion  and  appeal. 

"  I  hope  my  friend  [Senator  Edmunds]  instead  of 
criticism,"  said  Sumner  solemnly,  almost  sweetly,  in 
the  course  of  his  speech,  "  will  give  that  generous 
support  which  so  well  becomes  him.  He  sees  full 
well  that,  until  this  great  question  is  completely  set 
tled,  the  results  of  the  war  are  not  secured,  nor  is 
this  delicate  and  sensitive  subject  banished  from 
these  halls.  Sir,  my  desire,  the  darling  desire,  if  I 
may  say  so,  of  my  soul,  at  this  moment  is  to  close 
forever  this  question  so  that  it  shall  never  again  in 
trude  into  these  chambers — so  that  hereafter  in  all 
our  legislation,  there  shall  be  no  such  word  as  *  black  ' 
or  '  white,'  but  that  we  shall  speak  only  of  citizens 
and  of  men.  Is  that  an  aspiration  worthy  of  a  Sen 
ator?  Is  such  an  aspiration  any  ground  for  taunt 
from  the  Senator  from  Vermont  ?" 

Negro  citizenship  and  suffrage,  Sumner  had  cham 
pioned  on  high  ground,  never  to  save  the  political 
power  of  a  party  or  a  section,  but  as  a  supreme  duty 
which  the  Republic  owed  to  each  of  its  children,  to 
the  weakest  because  of  their  weakness.  Equality 
before  the  law  is,  indeed,  the  only  defense  which 
poverty  has  against  property  in  civilized  society. 
Without  it  monopoly  becomes  crowned  king,  and 
labor  crouching  slave  or  serf. 

Well  did  Sumner  understand  this  truth — under 
stand  that  wrong  has  a  fatal  gift  of  metamorphosis — 
ability  to  change  form,  color,  without  losing  its 
identity  and  character.  It  had  shed  in  America 
African  slavery.  It  would  reappear  as  African  serf 
dom,  unless  put  in  the  way  of  certain  and  utter  ex- 
26 


402  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tinction.  Equality  before  the  law,  he  had  the  sagacity 
to  perceive,  could  alone  avert  such  a  calamity,  con 
summate  so  vast  a  good.  Strenuously,  he  toiled  to 
make  it  everywhere  a  conquering  force,  the  master- 
principle  in  the  political  and  social  life  of  America. 

As  his  years  increased,  so  grew  his  passion  for 
justice  and  equality.  He  never  wearied  of  sowing 
and  resowing  the  statutes  of  the  nation,  and  the 
mind  of  the  people  with  the  grand  ideas  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  that  American  Magna 
Charta  and  store-house  of  equality.  This  entire 
absorption  in  one  lofty  purpose  lent  him  a  singular 
aloofness  and  isolation  in  the  politics  of  the  times. 

He  was  not  like  other  political  leaders.  He  laid 
stress  on  the  ethical  side  to  statesmanship,  they  em 
phasized  the  economical.  He,  all  his  life  long,  was 
chiefly  concerned  about  the  rights  of  persons,  they, 
about  the  rights  of  property.  Such  a  soul  could  not 
be  a  partisan.  Party  with  him  was  an  instrument 
and  nothing  else.  As  long  as  it  proved  efficient,  sub 
servient  to  justice  and  truth,  he  gave  it  his  hearty 
support.  To  others,  on  the  contrary,  party  was  as 
much  of  an  end  as  it  was  an  instrument. 

In  such  circumstances  moral  ideas  cannot  main 
tain  their  supremacy  in  political  bodies.  The  lust  of 
power  will  push  them  from  the  party  throne  and  as 
sume  the  crown  instead.  It  was,  therefore,  a  fore 
gone  conclusion  that  Sumner  and  his  party  should 
quarrel.  The  extraordinary  personalism  and  assump 
tions  of  Grant's  first  administration  provided  the 
casus  belli.  The  breach  so  made  steadily  widened 
between  Sumner  and  the  leaders  of  the  Republican 
party. 


CHARACTER    AND    CLOSING    YEARS.  403 

Sumner's  imposing  figure  grew  thenceforth  more 
distant  and  companionless.  Marital  unhappiness 
added  during  these  last  years  to  the  gloom  which 
was  settling  upon  his  life.  On  October  17,  1866,  he 
was  married  to  Mrs.  Alice  Hooper  (ne'e  Mason),  of 
Boston.  They  did  not  live  long  together,  and  he  was 
divorced  from  her,  May  10,  1873.  This  domestic  in 
felicity  ate  harpy-like  into  his  proud  heart.  In  the 
summer  of  1872  his  health  gave  decided  symptoms  of 
decline.  The  injury  which  his  constitution  had  suf 
fered  from  the  assault  of  Brooks  presently  developed 
new  complications,  and  renewed  all  the  old  bodily 
anguish.  A  temper,  always  austere  and  imperious, 
was  doubtless  not  mended  by  this  harassing  combi 
nation  of  troubles.  Alone,  in  this  extremity,  he  trod 
the  wine-press  of  bitter  sorrows. 

He  no  longer  had  a  party  to  lean  on.  Massachu 
setts,  alas  !  had  joined  the  harsh,  ungrateful  world, 
had  turned  in  anger  and  with  cruel  words  from  her 
great-hearted  son.  Her  Legislature  had  passed  a 
resolution  of  censure  of  him  because  of  his  Battle- 
flag  Bill  in  the  Senate,  already  referred  to.  That 
wretched  act  was,  however,  tardily  rescinded  and  a 
committee  sent  to  Washington  in  the  winter  of  1874 
to  communicate  the  grateful  tidings  to  Mr.  Sumner. 

No  woman's  hand  administered  to  him  in  the  crisis 
of  his  need.  He  had  nothing  but  his  cause.  And  to 
this  he  clung  with  the  pathos  and  passion  of  a  grand 
and  solitary  spirit.  Now  the  grasshopper  became  a 
burden,  and  the  once  stalwart  limbs  could  not  carry 
him  with  the  old-time  ease  and  regularity  to  his  seat 
in  the  Senate.  His  chair  became  frequently  vacant. 
An  overpowering  weariness  and  weakness  were  set- 


404  CHARLES    SUMNER. 

tling  upon  the  dying  statesman  Still  his  thoughts 
hovered  around  their  one  paramount  object.  Like 
as  the  eyes  of  a  mother,  about  to  die,  are  turned  and 
fixed  on  a  darling  child,  so  turned  his  thoughts  to 
the  struggling  cause  of  human  botherhood  and  equal 
ity.  Almost  his  last  words  were — "  Take  care  of  my 
Civil  Rights  Bill."  For  this  the  great  soul  would 
toil  yet  a  little  while.  But  it  was  otherwise  decreed, 
and  the  illustrious  Defender  of  Humanity  passed 
away  March  n,  1874,  at  his  home  in  Washington, 
leaving  to  his  country  and  to  mankind,  as  a  glorious 
heritage,  the  moral  grandeur  of  his  character  and 
achievements 


INDEX. 


Ada, 


Adams,  Charles  Francis,  70,  163,  183,  190,  195,  197,  201,  202 

296. 

Adams,  John,  1 13. 
Adams,  John  Quincy,  26,  131,  132,  133,  134,  170,  171,  172,  176, 

216. 

Advertiser,  The  Boston,  122,  136,  297,  298. 
Alderson,  Baron,  70. 
Allen,  Charles,  194,  195. 
Allen,  of  Rhode  Island,  282. 
Allston,  Washington,  98,  167. 
American  Jurist,  36,  51. 
American  Monthly  Review,  36. 

Andrew,  John  A.,  172.  183,  263,  324,  325,  326,  327,  343. 
Anthony,  Henry  B.,  388. 
Appleton,  Nathan,  177,  178. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  109. 
Ashmun,  John  H.,  31. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  366,  367. 
Attucks,  Crispus,  352. 

Baltimore  Mob,  The,  329,  330. 

Bancroft,  George,  48,  98. 

"  Barbarism  of  Slavery,"  310-316. 

Bates,  Attorney-General,  335,  355. 

Beckwith,  Rev.  George  C.,  233. 

Bell,  John,  252. 

Benjamin,  Judah  P.,  246,  250,  251,  252,  253,  257,  258. 

Benton,  Thomas  H.,  303. 

Biddle,  Nicholas,  45. 

Bingham,  John  A.,  277. 

Birney,  James  G.,  310. 

Black  Code  of  District  of  Columbia,  348. 

Black,  E.  J.,  135. 

"  Elaine  Amendment,"  379,  380,  381. 


406  INDEX. 

Elaine,  James  G.,  379,  398,  399,  400. 

Blair,  Francis  P.,  268,  293. 

Blair,  Montgomery,  366. 

Blyden,  Edward  W.,  343. 

Booth,  J.  Wilkes,  363. 

Boutwell,  George  S.,  209. 

Bowditch,  William  I.,  163,  243. 

Bowdoin  Prizes,  22,  36,  37. 

Breckinridge,  J.  C.,  301,  313. 

Bridgman,  Laura,  98. 

Bright,  Jesse  D.,  253,  254,  255,  258. 

Brooks,  Preston  S.,  279,  280,  281,  283,  284,  285,  291,  314,  398, 

399.  403- 

Brougham,  Henry,  71,  72. 
Brown,  John,  306,  308,  320. 
Browne,  John  W.,  40. 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  115. 
Brown-Sequard,  Dr.,  299. 

Buchanan,  James,  151,  301,  323,  324,  325,  328. 
Buller,  Charles,  77. 
Burke,  Edmund,  19,  270. 
Burlingame,  Anson,  287,  288,  294,  317. 
Burns,  Anthony,  230,  232,  245. 
Burritt,  Elihu,  212. 
Butler,  A.  P.,  236,  237,  238,  239,  240,  269,  271,  272,  273,  274, 

280,  281,  286. 
Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  243,  355. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  45,  46,  123,  124,  125,  126,  149,  150,  151,  155, 
156,  157,  158,  1 60,  204,  214,  216,  223,  224,  225,  303,  304,  311. 

Cameron,  Simon,  345. 

Campbell,  Lewis  D.,  283,  288. 

Carlisle,  Lady,  92. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  71. 

Cass,  Lewis,  79,  121,  193,  196,  282. 

Causin,  of  Maryland,  135. 

Chandler,  Peleg  W.,  289. 

Channing,  Professor  Edward  T,  298. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  54,  98,  120,  125,  126,  167,  168,  169, 
170. 

Chantry,  Sir  Francis,  89. 

Chapman,  Maria  Weston,  136. 

Charleston  Convention  307,  308. 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  202,  212,  215,  226,241,242,251,252,310, 
36l»  37L  372. 


INDEX.  407 

Chautauqua  Democrat,  313-315= 
Chestnut,  J.,  315,  316. 
Choate,  Rufus,  26,  39. 
Claflin,  William,  296,  325. 
Clay,  C.  C,  236. 

Clay,  Henry,  45,46,  214,  216,  223. 
Cleveland,   Henry  R.,  49,  105. 
Coastwise  Slave-Trade,  Abolition  of,  350. 
Cobb,  Ho  well,  283,  321. 
Colfax,  Schuyler,  277. 
Colored  Seamen,   138,  139,  140,  141,  142. 
leolored  Suffrage,  368-391. 
Colored  Troops,  353,  354,  355. 
Cooper,  J.  Fenimore,  88. 
Cooper,  of  Pennsylvania,  246,  247,  248,  249,  250,  251,  252,  253, 

254,  255,  256,  257,  258,  259. 
Courier  and  Enquirer,  New  York,  292. 
Crawford,  Thomas,  87,  88,  99. 
"Creole,"    The,  123-129. 
Crummell,  Alexander,  343. 
Curry,  of  Alabama,  314. 
Gushing,  Luther  S.,  51. 
Cushman,  Henry  W.,  209. 

Dana,  Richard  H.,  Jr.,  296. 

David,  Pierre  Jean,  89. 

Davis,    Henry  Winter,  368,  378. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  236,  314,321,  327,387. 

Dawson,  of  Louisiana,  135. 

Dayton,  W.  L.,  294,  301. 

De  Gerando,  Baron,  68. 

Denman,  Lord,  70. 

Devens,  Charles,  330. 

Dexter,  Franklin,  26. 

Dixon,  A,  236. 

Dodge,  of  Wisconsin,  282. 

Docjlittle.  James  R.,  365,  388. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  224,  225,  268,  271,  272,  273,274,  275,276, 

281,  303,  304,  305,  307,  308,  331. 
Douglass,  Frederick,  310. 
Dred  Scott,  Case  of,  302. 
Dunlap,  Andrew,  51. 

Edmunds,  George  S.,  401. 
Edmundson,  Henry  A.,  281,  283,  284. 


4°  INDEX. 

Eight  Hour  Law,  394,  395. 

Emerson,  Benjamin,  132. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  98,  290. 

Erskine,  39. 

Everett  Edward,  17,  70,  79,  125,  126,  296,  323,  324. 

Felton,  C.  C,  48,  49,  85,  98,  105,  106,  107,  289,  290. 

Fessenden,  William  Pitt, 226,  354,365,379,  388. 

Fillinore,  Millard,  206,  207,  214. 

Fitz william,  Lord,  72,  73,  74,  76. 

"  Five  of  Clubs,"  49. 

Foelix.J.J.  G.,64. 

Follett,  Sir  William  W.,7i. 

Foot,  Solomon,  256,  257,  315. 

Foster,  Lafayette  S.,  357. 

Foster,  Stephen  S.,  310. 

Fox  Hunt,  An  English,  74,  75. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  175. 

Fremont,  John  C.,  294,  301,  335. 

Fugitive  Slave  Law,  205-207. 

Fugitive  Slave  Laws,  Abolition  of,  357,  358. 

Furness,  James  T.,  294. 

Furness,  Rev.  W.  H.,  294, 

Galignani  's  Messenger,  79. 

Gardner,  Henry  J.,  295. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  15,  55,  114,119,  144,  146,  217,  310. 

"  Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  Life  of,"  310. 

Giddings,  Joshua  R.,  134,  135,  136,  195,  212,  226. 

Globe,  Congressional,  245,  312,  314. 

Gordon,  Nathaniel,  345. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  360,  363,  395,  396,  397,  398,  402. 

Gray,  John  C.,  190. 

Greeley,  Horace,  398. 

Green,  George  W.,  84,  86. 

Greenleaf,  Simon,  31,34,  38,  39,  44,  48,  50,  51,  59,  60,  79,  85,  98. 

Greenough,   Horatio,  87,  88,  89. 

Greenwood,  of  Arkansas,  283. 

Grimes,  of  Iowa,  389. 

Grote,  George,  71. 

Guizot,  62,  63. 

Gwin,  William  M.,  248. 

Hale,  John  P.,  215,  242,  243,  310. 
Hall,  Robert,  116. 


INDEX,  409 

Hallam,  Henry,  71. 

Hamlin,  Hannibal,  215. 

Hammond,  J.,  314. 

Harper's  Ferry,  306. 

Harper's  Weekly,  398. 

Harvey,  Jacob,  127. 

Hastings,  Warren,  270. 

Hawley,  Joseph  R.,  233. 

Hayti,  Republic  of,  342,  343,  344,  396,  397. 

Hendricks,  Thomas  H.,  350. 

Herald,  New  York,  320. 

Hickman,  John,  315. 

Hillarcl,  George  S.,  48,  49,  51,  55,  60,  66,  68,  71,  72,  73,  74,  76, 

80,  81,  85,  89,  97,  119,  120,  172. 
Hoar,  Samuel,  140,  141,  195. 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  290. 
Hooper,  Alice,  403. 

Howe,  Dr.  S.  G.,  98,  101,  105,  107,  162,  172,  183,  184,  185. 
Hubbard,  Henry,  140,  141. 
Hudson,  Charles,  135. 
Humboldt,  91. 
Hunter,  R.  T.  M.,  219,  314. 
Huntington,  F.  D.,  295,  296. 

Ingham,  Robert,  79,  92. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  45. 

Jay,  John,  142. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  175,  239. 

Jeffrey,  Sir  Francis,  71,  72. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  371,  372,  373,  374,  376,  377,  378,  381,  382, 

384,  385.  386,  387.  388,  389,  390. 
Johnson,  J.  D.,  343. 
Johnson,  Samuel,  in. 
Jones,  G.  W.,  235,  236. 
Jones,  Walter,  44. 

Keith,  Lawrence  M.,  281,  283,  284,  287,  314. 
Kemble,  Fanny,  42. 
Kent,  Chancellor,  41,  122. 
Key,  Francis  Scott,  44. 
King,  Preston,  315. 

Lafayette,  Lecture  on,  323. 
Lamar,  L.  Q.  C.,  314. 


410  INDEX. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  71. 
Lawrence,  Amos,  294. 
Law  Reporter,  108. 
Lee,  Robert  E.,  360. 
Leavitt,  Joshua,  195. 
Liberator,  The,  55,  119,  146. 
Liberia,  Republic  of,  342,  343,  344. 
Liberty  Bell,  The,  136. 

Lieber,  Francis,  53,  54,  56,  58,  59,  66,  78,  no,  133. 
y^  Lincoln,  Abraham,  304,  306,  307,  319,  320,  321,  323,  328,  329, 
33L  332,  333.  334,  335.  33^,  33$,  342,  345,  346,  347,  351,  352- 
360,  361,  362,  363,  366,  370,  371. 
Liverniore,  Rev.  A.  A.,  37. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  49,  70,  85,  98,  105,  211,  294,  296. 
Louis,  St.,  116. 
Loring,  Edward  Greeley,  48. 
Lovejoy,  Elijah  P.,  120. 
Lovejoy,  J.  C.,  195. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  136,  215. 
Lyons,  Lord,  340. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  71. 

Macready,  William  C.,  98. 

Mallory,  Stephen  R.,  236. 

Mann,  Horace,  48,  98,  99. 

Marshall,  Chief  Justice  John,  43,  44. 

Martineau,  Harriet,  289. 

Mason,  James  M.,  236,  237,  238,  240,  241,  248,  249,  268,  273, 

274,  276,  281,  282,  309,  314,  339,  341- 
McLean,  John,  43. 
McDouga'll,  U.  S.  Senator,  388. 
McDuffie,  George,  56. 
Metternich,  Prince,  91. 
Mexican  War,  179-183. 

*  vMilnes,  R.  Moncton  (Lord  Houghton),  100. 
Milton,  John,  37. 
Milton,  Lord,  74,  75. 

Missouri  Compromise,  Repeal  of,  224-330. 
Mittermaier,  Professor,  91. 
Montagu,  Mrs.  Basil,  92. 
Morgan,  of  New  York,  280. 
Morpeth,  Lord,  79,  136. 
Morris,  Robert,  220. 
Motley,  J.  Lothrop,  70,  397. 
Murray,  of  New  York,  280. 


INDEX.  411 

Nasby,  Petroleum  V.,  362,  363. 

Nast,  Thomas,  398. 

Norris,  Moses,  247,  253,  255,256. 

Osgood,  Rev.  Sanr.uel,  38. 
Otis,  Harrison  Gray,  26. 

Palazzuola,  Convent  of,  85. 

Palfrey,  John  G.,  172,  190. 

Parke,  Baron,  70. 

Parker,  Theodore,  99. 

Penn,  William,  116. 

Pennington,  A.  C.  M.,  283. 

Perkins,  J.  C.,  51,  52. 

Peters,  Richard,  42,  104. 

Pettit,  John,  236,  237. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  22,  98,  105,  120,  144,  165,  216,  217,  310,  387. 

Pickering,  John,  167. 

Pickering  Reports,  51. 

Pierce,  Carlos,  296. 

Pierce,  Edward  L.,  51. 

Pierpont,  John,  26. 

Pillsbury,  Parker,  310. 

Plato,  116. 

Polk,  James  K.,  180,  181. 

Powers,  Hiram,  87. 

Prescott,  William  H.,  77,  98,  105. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  12,  26,  33,  34,  60,  76,  88,  172,  294,  295,  296. 

Rand,  Benjamin,  38. 

Ranke,  Professor  Leopold  Von,  91. 

Rantoul,  Robert,  Jr.,  209,  215. 

Raumer,  Professor  Von,  91. 

Raynor,  Kenneth,  135. 

Rice,  Alexander  H.,  294,  296. 

Rolfe,  Robert  M.,  71. 

Rossi,  Count,  68. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,   400. 

Salem,  Peter,  352. 

Sanborn,  Frank  B.,  308,  309. 

San  Domingo,  Republic  of,  396,  397. 

Saulsbury,  of  Delaware,  343,  344, 

Savigny,  Friedrich  Karl,  91,  92. 


412  INDEX. 

Schiller,  167. 

Senior,  Nassau  W.,  72. 

Sevvall,  Samuel  E.,  15,  16,  55,  56,  119. 

^^Seward,  William  H.,  202,  214,  226,  229,  245,  277,  282,  283,  310, 
315,321,  328,  358. 

Shattuck,  Daniel,  243. 

Shaw,  Robert  G.,  353. 

Sherman,  John,  317,  349,  357,  358,  365,  379,  388. 

Sherman,  W.  T.,  360. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  117. 

Simonton,  James  W.,  281. 

Sismondi,  68. 

Slavery  Agitation,  146-161. 

Slavery  in  District  of  Columbia,  Abolition  of,  347. 

Slave-Trade,  121,  122,  123. 
v'Slidell,  John,  281,  339,  341,  387- 

Smith  Brothers,  Case  of,  361,  362,  363. 

Smith,  Gerritt,  226. 

Smith,  Sidney,  72. 

Sparks,  Jared,  98,  296. 

Spinner,  Travis,  288. 

Stanley,  Edward,  351. 
\Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  353. 

Star,  The,  231. 

Stearns,  Jonathan  F.,  28,  38. 

Stevens,  Thaddeus,  353,  3?6,  379-  381,  387- 

Story,  Joseph,  31,  32,  33,  34.  36,  38,  39-  4°.  43.  44,  48,  $o,  60,66, 
67,  69,  78,  91,  98,  104,  122,  167. 

Story,  William  W.,  32,  33,  35,  96,  97. 

Street  Railroads  of  District  of  Columbia,  359,  360. 

Stuart,  of  Michigan,  246,  247. 

Sumner,  Charles,  birth  and  ancestry,  9-11  ;  father  and  fam 
ily,  12-18;  childhood,  youth,  and  early  character,  18-26; 
choice  of  a  profession  and  ideal  of  a  lawyer,  29,  30,  31  ;  at 
the  Dane  Law  School,  31-38  ;  in  a  lawyer's  office,  38  ;  visits 
Washington,  40-46  ;  first  glimpse  of  slavery,  47 ;  at  the 
.bar,  48  ;  "  Five  of  Clubs,"  49  ;  instructor  at  the  Law  School, 
50;'  magazine  and  editorial  work,  51;  friendship  with  Dr. 
Lieber,  53,  54  ;  early  interest  in  the  peace  question,  54,  55  ; 
early  interest  in  the  anti-slavery  movement,  55,  56  ;  per 
sonal  appearance  in  early  manhood,  57,  58  ;  in  love  With 
Europa,  58,  59;  first  visit,  60-63  ;  in  Paris,  63-69;  in  Eng 
land,  70-80;  Paris  again,  80;  sunny  Italy,  81-89;  deatn  « 
his  father,  89-90;  in  Germany,  90-92;  again  in  England, 
and  return  to  America,  92;  resumes  the  practice  of  his 


INDEX.  413 

profession,  94-97;  a  goodly  company,  97-99;  Crawford's 
Orpheus,  99;  Horace  Mann,  99;  capital  punishment  and 
prison  reform,  100,  101  ;  Dr.  Howe's  estimate  of  him,  101  ; 
depression  and  overwork,  101-108;  dangerous  illness,  108, 
109;  death  of  a  favorite  sister,  109  ;  amiability  and  sweet 
ness  of  character  in  early  manhood,  109,  no;  loves  all 
mankind,  in,  112;  "The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations,"  112- 
118;  the  slave-trade  and  right  of  search,  121,  122,  123;' 
the  "  Creole  "  case,  123,  129;  Webster  and  Channing,  130; 
right  of  petition  and  John  Quincy  Adams,  131-134;  the 
bullying  of  the  South  in  Congress,  134-136;  the  Constitu 
tion  does  not  recognize  property  in  men,  136;  the  people  of 
the  free  States  and  slavery,  136-138  ;  colored  seamen,  138- 
141  ;  interest  in  the  subject,  141-142  :  condemns  caste  preju 
dice  byword  and  deed,  142-144;  first  speech  against  slav 
ery,  162-166;  "The  Scholar,  The  Jurist,  The  Artist,  The 
Philanthropist,"  167-171 ;  tries  to  gra  ft  anti-slavery  principles 
on  the  Whig  party,  171-178  ;  Rober  t  C.  Winthrop  and  the 
Mexican  War,  178-183;  nominated  for  Congress,  but  de 
clines  to  run,  183-184;  minors  and  the  Mexican  War,  185- 
186;  "White  Slavery  in  the  Barbary  States,"  186-187; 
seeks  to  establish  an  anti-slavery  test  for  candidates  for  the 
Presidency,  189-192  ;  leaves  the  Whig  party  and  helps  to 
organize  the  Free  Soil  party,  193-197  ;  earnestness  as  an 
anti-slavery  reformer,  199-200  ;  nominated  a  second  time  for 
Congress,  200-201  ;  estimates  of  his  anti-slavery  labors  by 
C.  F.  Adams,  201-202  ;  qualifications  for  political  leadership, 
202-203;  opposition  to  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  of  1850,  205- 
207;  election  to  the  U.  S.  Senate,  208-213;  in  that  "iron 
and  marble  body,"  214-215  ;  first  great  speech  against  slav 
ery,  216-219;  attacks  color  prejudice  in  the  public  schools 
of  Boston,  220;  attacks  slavery  on  sundry  occasions,  220- 
222;  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  226-229; 
Anthony  Burns,  230-231;  encounters  in  Washington 
increasing  malignity  and  intolerance,  231-233;  assailed  by  rep 
resentatives  of  the  slave-power  in  debate,  235-244  ;  struggling 
for  the  floor,  245-259 ;  the  Republican  party,  262-265  I 
"  Crime  against  Kansas,"  267-273 ;  Stephen  A.  Douglas, 
274-276;  in  danger,  277-278;  assaulted  in  the  Senate,  279- 
292;  injuries  and  invalidism,  292-299 ;  sharp  passage  with 
James  M.  Mason,  308-309 ;  "  The  Barbarism  of  Slavery," 
310-316;  menaces,  316-318  ;  no  more  concessions  to  slav 
ery,  320-322  ;  crisis  and  compromise,  323-325  ;  correspond 
ence  with  Governor  Andrew,  325-328 ;  narrow  escape  in 
Baltimore,  329-330;  he  and  Lincoln  compared,  331-335; 


INDEX. 

appeals  to  the  people  for  a  more  thorough-going  anti-slavery 
policy  in  suppressing  the  Rebellion,  336-338  ;  chairman  of 
Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  and  the  "  Trent  " 
case,  338-342  ;  Hayti  and  Liberia,  342-343  ;  suppression  of 
the  slave-trade,  344-345 ;  emancipation  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  345-347  ;  black  code  of  the  District  of  Columbia, 
348;  coastwise  slave-trade,  349-350;  thorn  in  the  side  of 
the  administration,  350-351;  colored  troops,  352-353 ;  dis 
crimination  in  the  army  on  account  of  color,  354-355  ;  repeal 
of  Fugitive  Slave  Laws,  357-358 ;  caste  distinction  on  the 
street  railways  of  the  District  of  Columbia  359-360;  second 
term  for  Lincoln,  361  ;  last  conference  with  that  great  man, 
361-363  ;  eulogy  on  the  same,  363 ;  reconstruction  and  colored 
suffrage,  364-371  ;  Andrew  Johnson,  371-378;  the  "  Elaine 
Amendment,"  379-381  ;  colored  suffrage  in  Colorado  and 
Nebraska,  381-383 ;  struggle  between  Congress  and  Pres 
ident  Johnson,  384-390;  public  school  system  and  homestead 
proposition  for  the  South,  391  ;  unity  and  power  the 
grand  object  of  the  founders  of  the  Republic,  392- 
394;  the  man  of  one  idea,  394;  the  eight  hour  move 
ment,  394-395 ;  civil  service  and  tariff  reforms,  395  ;  Pres 
ident  Grant,  395-398;  Liberal  Republican  revolt,  398;  James 
G.  Elaine,  398-399 ;  Battle  Flag  Bill,  399  ;  Supplimentary 
Civil  Rights  Bill,  400-401,  404;  not  like  other  political 
leaders,  402  ;  last  sufferings  and  sorrows,  death,  403-404. 

Sumner,  Charles  Pinckney,  12-18,28,  89. 

Sumner,  George,  no,  m,  130. 

Sumner,  Job,  9,  10,  n. 

Sumner,  Mary,  109, 

Sumner,  Relief,  12,  13. 

Sumner,  William,  9. 

Supplementary  Civil  Rights  Bill,  400,  401,  404. 

Talfourd,  Sergeant,  71, 

Taylor,  Zachary,  180,  193,  194,  196,  198. 

Thayer,  Eli,  296. 

Thibaut,  Professor,  91,  92. 

Ticknor,  George,  70,  129. 

Times,  London,  341,  342. 

Times,  New  York,  281. 

Toornbs,  Robert,  281,  314,  389. 

"  Trent  "  Case,  The,  339. 

Trumbull,  Lyman,  369,  379. 

Union,  The,  231. 


INDEX.  415 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  197,  198. 
Vaughn,  Justice  John,  70. 
Vesey's  Reports,  107,  108. 

Wade,  Benjamin,  226,  379,  382. 

Walker,  Amasa,  296. 

Walker,  I.  P.,  249,  250,  256,  257. 

Walker,  Robert  J.,  268. 

Washington,  George,  175,  351. 

Waterston,  Mrs.,  34. 

Wattles,  Augustus,  318. 

Wayland,  Francis,  289. 

Webster,  Daniel,  25,  43,  44,  45,  46,  124,  125,  126,  127,  129,  130, 

131,  158,  177,  178,  189,  192,  193,  198,  199,  202,  204,  205,  208, 

209,  212,  214,  216,223,  226,  244. 
Weed,  Thurlow,  268,  321. 
Weld,  Theodore  D.,  217,  310. 
Weller,  J.  B.,  250,  252,  257,  258. 
Wheaton,  Henry,  121. 
Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  296. 
Whittier,  John  G.,  212. 
Wigfall,  L.  T.,  314. 
Wilde,  Sergeant,  71. 
Wilkes,  Captain,  339. 
Wilson,  Henry,   135,  194,  195,  202,  210,  265,  266,  277,  282,  286. 

287,  290,  291,  310,  315,  317,  346,  354,  356. 
Winthrop,  Robert  C,  70,  139,  141,  177,  178,  179,  181,  182,  183, 

184,  185,  1 88,  190,  205,  209,  297. 
Wordsworth,  William,  71. 
Wortly,  James  A.,  92. 
Wright,  Elizur,  310. 

Yancey,  William  L.,  321. 
Young,  Brigham,  313. 


14  DAY  USE 

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